With much spiritual guidance from Dylan Nachand ’01: Recently there have been complaints regarding the quality of parties at our prestigous college, and rightfully so. Even if it is not in Grooveline, the formula is the same: meet in a designated area, wait in line for beer, watch people dance and try to get drunker (sic). Richard Marie Caperton ’01 has suggested that we take our designated parties to greater and more stately mansions on our campus but I would like to suggest that location is not the problem. In fact, the problem lies in expecting our college to provide parties that are an awesome time and fun to attend. Is this a cruise ship? Are we on Semester at Sea? I think not.

The college is lenient, but does not force us to have a good time. It is not their place to put a beer in your hand and provide the peer pressure necessary to drink it. That is our job, as students. Which brings me to my current point: what has happened to the dorm-room party? Why haven’t any freshman come up with the brilliant number-of-beers parties of old? This reporter misses the 420-beer party, the 1000-beer party, even the Trash party. Maybe Paula Cole put it best in her adult-contemporary smash "Where have all the [dorm-oriented beer parties] gone?"

Sure, those kooky RAs like to bust up parties; it’s not their fault, that’s what The Man pays them to do. But isn’t that half the fun of a beer party? Yeah, six of my closest friends and I are still paying off Jorah Dannenberg’s ’01 $1,400 19th birthday party (fuck all y’all who swore you were gonna help out with that), but that party stands out in my memory as a real coming-of-age experience. Anyway, RAs love confiscating kegs and breaking up parties with lots of beer. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be RAs would they? So make an RA’s day: throw a huge, drunken orgy of a party, rip the door off of a bathroom stall, and puke until 7:00 the next evening. They love that shit.

Yet I realize that perhaps there isn’t the knowledge and experience necessary to throw this sort of party. There haven’t been enough examples of what a good dorm-party could and should be. For that let us, the upper classmen, take responsibility. We have not provided the leadership that is necessary. We have not passed the torch, so to speak. As a North Campus representative I can only say that the 1,000-beer party, previously mentioned in The Student Life was the pinnacle of a dorm room party. It lasted all night, it brought together people from not only Pomona’s campus but the five colleges, and perhaps most importantly, it got many people extremely drunk. This may be the goal of any dorm room party really, for how drunk can you truly get waiting in a half-hour line every time you need to get a beer? Not only that, can you have a conversation with that friend of yours if you have a rap song blaring in your ear and a freshman booty, usually female but not necessarily, in your face? I think not. Did you ever see Risky Business? Do you know what it’s about? No, it’s not about getting hookers and throwing awesome parties for all your friends (including Balki and Booger). It’s about bucking the ‘rents and saying "What the fuck?" And, if you had bothered to watch past the part where Rebecca DeMornay takes her clothes off, you’d know that Joel gets into Princeton anyway. So, what can we learn from this? Well, you can study all the time, avoid beer parties at all costs, and earn early acceptance to Pomona, or you can smoke, drink, and lay your way through high school en route to an Ivy League education complete with lots and lots of beer parties (in dorms!). You make the call, my friend. You make the call.