Campus Comment | Snowball fights! Late nights! And, of course, NQR

The end of spring giving way to the beginning of summer frequently marks not only the end of a season, but the end of an era. Aside from the classes, exams and papers that characterize any student's four years in college, there are also the candlelight ceremonies at the beginning of freshman year and the end of senior year, Homecoming, a capella concerts, late-night cannon paintings, hangouts on the rooftop of Tisch, semesters spent abroad and, of course, the Naked Quad Run and Spring Fling. Jumbos thus often find it hard to single out their one favorite time which best caps their Tufts experience. Junior Cynthia Medina, who has spent the past semester studying abroad in Paris, recalls the first snow storm of her freshmen year as her favorite memory. In the grand tradition of sledding and snowball fights along the President's Lawn, Medina remembers a bonding experience with her floor-mates in the Massachusetts cold. "All the people on my floor went out to play in the snow," Medina said. "We played football and went sledding ... Afterwards, we went inside and hung out in the lounge to sing Christmas carols and drink hot chocolate. It finally felt like Christmas!" When sophomore Ara Cho reflects on her time at Tufts thus far, she thinks fondly of late nights spent with friends, "staying up super late, ordering food, eating ice cream and just hanging out," she said. "But there was one time where we played a 'Punk'd' sort-of scenario on some of our friends," Cho said, laughing. "We prank called them using fake voices and personas. And then we got them out of the room so we could hide in there and scare them." On the other hand, sophomores Amod Rajbhandari and Rodrigo Armstrong share a rather unique memory: partying with one of their professors. "Every year, Roberta Oster Sachs, who teaches 'Producing Films for Social Change,' promises her students that she'll party with them, but she never does," Rajbhandari said. "Until this year," Armstrong added. "She finally did." Rajbhandari and Armstrong described how different yet fun it was to dance and laugh alongside one of Tufts' most well-liked professors, who is leaving the University this year. Though it may be fun to get down with your professor, sometimes nothing beats a good old-fashioned floor-wide celebration. Freshmen Kate McCaffrey and Lindsay Forys, who lived on the fourth floor of Lewis Hall this past year, have fond memories of a floor-wide party where the only required item of clothing was underwear. At a school where stripping down in the cold is a time-honored tradition, the underwear party was not too surprising. "It was really fun ... everyone was going crazy and we were having a great time," the girls said. "Until TUPD came and broke it up." Sophomore Meredith Pickett's fondest Tufts memory comes from a scantily-clad night as well - the Nighttime Quad Reception, also known as Naked Quad Run, or NQR. "When I was in West for NQR this past year, my friend Erica fell into me on the steps because the stairs were still wet from the snow. I fell down the stairs and I mean ... we went down hard," Pickett said. "We got up and tried to walk it off like we were fine," she added. "But as soon as all the people who saw us left, we hobbled back up to our friend Liz's room." Though the memory may conjure up images of painful bruises, Pickett begs to differ. "I told everyone that Erica pushed me down the stairs," she said. "It was actually pretty awesome." Junior Becky Hayes remembers a moment unique to students who spend time exploring another country and studying abroad. Hayes, who spent the fall of her junior year in Central America, remembers evenings in Leon, Nicaragua, when street kids would dress up in intricate costumes depicting a huge elegant woman and a smaller man with only a large head. "Every night, at dusk, in the main park by the cathedral, all these kids would come out dressed up and perform a dance with drumming to earn money," Hayes explained. "It symbolized Nicaragua's fight for independence against Spain." Hayes, who watched the dancing while backpacking from Costa Rica to Nicaragua and Guatemala, described the tradition as a four-hour evening ritual, with the children wandering around the city and stopping at different bars and cafes as well. "It was amazing," she said.