Oh, What a Night!

Mark your calendars upperclass students because the 1999 President's Ball is only one year away.

Upperclassmen, graduate students and even visitors from Yale joined the Class of 2001 at the annual administration-hosted gala event on Saturday March 14.

The music drew an enthusiastic crowd. As the audience filtered out of the Collegium Musicum and Radcliffe Choral Society concert in Sanders Theatre, the strains of Madonna, Chumbawumba and Celine Dion pounded in Annenberg. The music was great and the dancing was fast, a very un-Harvard party.

The ball was the perfect transition in the normally three-tiered weekend night. Stage one is dinner, hopefully a little better than Harvard Dining Services fare. Stage two involves watching one of the myriad of student concerts and plays, or seeing a movie. Stage three--dancing, boozing or bar-hopping in Harvard dorms, or area clubs and bars--does not usually get under way until 11:30 p.m. Thus the President's Ball provided a perfect transition between stages two and three.

So my friends and I let ourselves dance wildly, and almost anonymously in the crowd of first years, standing out in our brown corduroy "formal-wear." The dance was pressure-free. We weren't worried about drinking too much, avoiding hook-ups or trying to impress.

The atmosphere was aided by the divine food--fake bubbly in plastic stem ware, piles of strawberries, melon and grapes, divine desserts--and "Titanic" theme. While the theme song from the movie played several first-year men stood on lookout from the balcony, hands shading their eyes, swaying with the waves of dancers below.

It would most certainly amount to less than the almost $25,000 the Undergraduate Council had planned to spend on Springfest were the administration to host an annual party for every class. But then again, if they were supposed to be there, jaded Harvard upperclass students would probably have found something to complain about.

Part of the fun was our surprise at the serendipitous semi-formal. The ball had all the benefits without the worry about formal dress, dates or the kiss good night. The experience reminded us that having fun is all about kicking back and relaxing, something Harvard students do all too rarely.