Ah, the night after Lawnparties. The campus is quiet, what with most of the student body still passed out from that 6 p.m. “nap.” The seersucker suit has been carefully hung back up in the closet, and the campus should stop smelling like stale beer around midday tomorrow. (Just kidding, freshmen. It always smells like this.)
The first Lawnparties of the post-Big Band era (refresher here) seemed to go well. The weather, in stark contrast to last year’s scorching fall and muddy spring, could not have been more beautiful – low-70s, sunny, warm in the sun and cool in the shade. The myriad cover bands seemed to satisfy the tipsy student throng’s desire for live music. I didn’t hear a single complaint all day about the lack of a headlining act.
This shouldn’t be surprising, at least, I don’t think. Lawnparties was never really about the band. It’s a wonderfully weird celebration of Princeton, honoring both what it is and what it could be.
Yes, Lawnparties is an anthem to the Princeton stereotype – loud music, louder pants, drinking before 10 a.m., and preppy bacchanalia. But it’s not just day drinking that makes Lawnparties a special day.
For all its elitist trappings, Lawnparties is Princeton’s egalitarian party. For one day, it doesn’t matter who you know, or what club you’re in. For one day, the bouncers don’t care if you’re on the list, or have two salmon passes. If you go to Princeton, for one day the eating club lawns are your lawns. Seniors and freshmen stand shoulder to shoulder in the sun, drinking warm champagne and rocking out to Journey.
Tomorrow we’ll be back to our normal social stratification, and waiting until 5 p.m. But it’s a nice reminder at the start of the year of what Princeton could be.
(photo credit: AW)
Egalitarian? Since when? Lawnparties elides the stratification between bicker and sign-in, between the haves and have-mores, the populars and the more-populars. But it doesn’t do anything to include people who don’t own a single pastel Lacoste polo or sundress, who don’t like to get shitfaced, or who for a variety of other reasons are just disgusted, not entertained, by the preppy Ivy League stereotype. Believe it or not, 30% of this university’s juniors and seniors aren’t in an eating club. And for many of them, all the clubs could be on PUID and they’d still feel like losers and outcasts. For some of them, Lawnparties is an excuse to go out of town for the weekend, or else an insufferably hot weekend spent indoors with all the windows shut, trying to drown out the sounds of someone else’s party to which, supposed “egalitarian” nature aside, it’s still perfectly clear that those who don’t conform aren’t invited.
[…] and thus fits totally seamlessly into a dominant culture that further privileges privilege. The most recent offender, wherein the author argues that Princeton’s twice-yearly bacchanalic prepfest isn’t […]
Idk, it seems like you’re only gonna feel like a loser/outcast if you choose to be painfully self-conscious of the difference in the way you dress relative to others. In day to day interactions, you don’t necessarily feel out-of-place next to slash stay away from people who dress differently, do you?
To me, Lawnparties is like the biggest costume party of the year. And like at all costume parties, not everyone really goes all out, but everyone can still have fun – head out with some of your friends (who presumably don’t care about what you wear) and just hang out and enjoy the music.