FM Imagines: Ye Olde Yardefeste, 1873

It’s a semester and a half into your freshman year at Harvard: You’ve given up on three start-ups, stopped going to the gym, and come to the realization that this school has enough sausage to stimulate Upton Sinclair’s journalistic appetite. But Upton Sinclair hasn’t been born yet and the absence of females in your life isn’t the product of spitting bad game or being denied into the Fly.

No, it’s simply 1873, six years before Harvard created a sister institution for female students and 33 years before Upton Sinclair’s muckraking led the government to regulate the meatpacking indus- try. Harvard, at this point in time, is an unregulated sausage fest, and there’s nothing you can do about it. But that’s all about to change, or so FM likes to imagine. The administration has just decided to provide you with a new vehicle for false hope: This year, Harvard is hosting Yardfest.

In reality, Yardfest is a relatively recent tradition at Harvard, with the Wu-Tang Clan as the first performers in 1994. But FM will take you on a trip down memory lane to imagine what Yardfest would have been like, had it been around back then. So without further adieu, here are the three top theories for how Yardfest 1873 would have gone down:

Bach Party

If you think block parties are a fun way to spend your time, you’ve clearly never been to a Bach party. Yeah, that’s right: a party that exclusively plays the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. How do you promiscuously grind to the music of Bach, you might ask? You don’t; Bach doesn’t believe in foreplay. At Bach parties, it’s sex or nothing, and from what I’ve heard, it seems as though classical music serves as the ultimate lubricant.

(Ulysses S.) DAPA Grant Party

Every Harvard student knows that receiving DAPA grants is a surefire way to have a turnt party. But you know what leads to even more fun than a DAPA Grant party? A Ulysses S. (DAPA) Grant party, designed to honor then-President of the United States Ulysses S. Grant. This Yardfest had everything: Lincoln posters, Civil War reenactments, West Point students, you name it. What’s missing? Drugs and alcohol, of course. But as any veteran of a DAPA party can tell you, illegal substances are not a necessary component of a great party.

EDM

In a time when the words “electronic” and “music” had no place in the same sentence (the lightbulb hadn’t even been invented yet), EDM was already all the rage in Cambridge, Mass. By EDM, of course, I mean elegant domesticated monogamy, a practice wherein students at Harvard College dance with one person all night, talk about cohabitation, and dress in clothes far too formal and covered-up for the certified banger that was Yardfest 1873.

Ultimately, as with any great moment in history or literature, we may never know the exact details of Yardfest 1873. But just as millions continue to believe that Delonte West really slept with Lebron’s mother and Babe Ruth really called his shot, I have faith that Yardfest 1873 was the greatest party in the history of mankind. Take that, Spring Fling.