Well children, you've gone and done it. You've angered the college party gods.
As a recent alumnus, I am well aware of the fact that Tufts is not exactly a "party school." In the 2006 official party school rankings issued jointly by U.S. News and World Report and the good people at the Solo Cup Company, Tufts held court just below Brigham Young University (BYU) and just above the University of Phoenix; the former being a Mormon institution and the latter granting degrees almost entirely via the Internet.
This is no slight to Tufts students. You young ones more than make due, just as your predecessors have in the past. But call a spade a spade. Tufts is no Ohio State or University of Miami. Hell, it's not even Middlebury (and according to the U.S. News and World Report, it's not even BYU.)
Which is why I was delighted to hear of the ingenuity of one such young man, a Mr. Michael Sparandara, in a Mar. 13, 2006 Tufts Daily article ("Throwing an off-campus party: tough stuff?") - nay, expos?© - on the topic of off-campus partying.
Mr. Sparandara, as the article tells me, routinely finds humorous themes to engage his guests, sends out almost uncountable Evites, and makes every effort to "mix the party up" (i.e. putting out roasted garlic hummus with pita chips instead of more conventional party fare for his guests to nibble on, or similar zany doings). I applaud and appreciate this sort of innovation. What I do not appreciate is Mr. Sparandara's lack of humility. And THAT, students of Tufts, is why you have angered the college party gods.
Mr. Sparandara's innovativeness is not without precedent, oh no. But this is something he has failed to realize. When recounting the most successful of his zany parties, one with a Eurotrash theme, Mr. Sparandara is quoted as saying that his was "the original."
As soon as those words hit the printing press, an alarm went off in the college party gods' fortress of solitude, after which I was soon contacted by them and alerted to this young man's "brazen bravado," as they called it (they are partial to useless alliteration). As the earthly liaison to the college party gods, I urged them to remain calm. I urged them to keep from doing something rash (like close another fraternity). Lastly, I agreed to speak to you, the Tufts student body, on their behalf.
Not to pick on Mr. Sparandara, but his Eurotrash-themed party was most certainly NOT the original. In February of 2005, just over a year ago, my friends and I threw a spectacular Eurotrash party. It was so big that it spanned eight stories of a four story Hillsides tower, and that's actually not possible. It was so big, that we had the cousin of G??nther there, and he gave us a vehement thumbs up. (Yes, that's right, THE G??nther. And if you don't know who G??nther is, you really shouldn't be throwing Eurotrash parties.)
It was so big, we had people having sex in the bathrooms and strippers snorting lines of cocaine off each other in a configuration I can only compare to an Escher drawing (note: there were no strippers, but, really, who's keeping track.)
It was so big, we had two types of punch, the "??ber-panty-dropper" and "das-panty-dropper," and we dressed up like the guys from the "Dragostea din tei" video. It was so big, a random break dancing circle erupted spontaneously and it was the site of a now prominent political science teaching assistant debuting his fantastically unskilled break dancing routine. I mean, we had ACTUAL Eurotrash at our party, and they felt completely at home.
I am not trying to prove that our party was better than Mr. Sparandara's (even though it was). And I am not saying that we were the first to ever throw a Eurotrash-themed party. The only claim I make here is that Mr. Sparandara's party was not "the original." Not by a long shot.
Perhaps he had just reinvented the wheel, perhaps he was a subconscious copycat of parties past; it does not matter. What does matter, however, is that Mr. Sparandara's immodesty is not in the spirit of the college party.
Who invented Beirut (or beer pong for those still sensitive about the Lebanese civil war)? Who played the first game of flip cup? Who figured out that using the words "panty-dropper" in such an overt context would not anger girls as long as you gave them free alcohol? It does not matter. All that matters is that you remember a simple maxim: there were many before you, and there will be many after you.
So I implore you: remain humble out of deference for your predecessors. Soon your four years riding the wild wave of your undergraduate education will come to an end and all that will remain of you is an irascible, embittered, shell of your former self who stays in on Fridays after 60-hour work weeks that leave you wholly and completely incapacitated.
I pray that my words do not go unheeded. It would be unfortunate to see a generation of Tuftonians grow up believing that they were the first to hold a flapjacks and 40s breakfast or that they were the progenitors of the vodka-melon.
With that said, enjoy the rest of your year, young ones. It's just unfortunate that the deadline for transfer applications to BYU has already passed.
Saj Pothiawala is a member of the Class of 2005, and is currently living with his three cats in the greater New York area. He consistently forgets to pack his lunch, but is otherwise satisfied with life after college. Sorta.
