And in case you were unsure, this useful website confirms your suspicions. We’ll be offering occasional dispatches on the insanity, as per usual. In mere hours, thousands of accomplished alums will return to campus to regress into some kind of animalistic state. Among those accomplished alums is Brooke Shields ’87, who is said to be returning for her 25th Reunion. And while we’re on the subject of famous people, non-alum Bon Jovi will perform at the 25th tent, according to several anonymous tipsters.
For Steven Liss ’10, Reunions is an orange and black Christmas, and even harder to wait for than the original.
While checking his calendar last night, Liss got the inspiration for the Reunions Advent Calendar – similar to countdowntoreunions.com, but with a daily bonus – videos, cartoons, funny quotes, “anything exalting Princeton, really,” Liss said. It kicks off on May 1st, with the famous Doug Davis buzzer-beater.
Apparently other Princetonians are just as enthusiastic . The site went live at 3:00am this morning, and got 500 Facebook likes in the first 12 hours.
Since graduating two years ago, Liss has been working for his state and US senators in Boston, researching and writing laws and speeches. He’s hoping to make a career writing in politics, eventually ending up in Washington, but says you’ll be able to find him back in the Orange Bubble every June: “I plan on being one of those guys carrying a ‘This is my 60th+ consecutive Reunion’ sign.”
Liss says he’s got some good stuff saved for later this month, so stay tuned. Just don’t try to sneak an early look:
First and foremost, happy Reunions. If you were at all confused about timing, this should help clear up any uncertainty:
I always forget the order of these words.
Second, apologies for our torpor over the past week or two — finals are finals, and apparently the term “Dead Week” applies to this blog as well. Bur we’ll be staying active through the summer months, serving up our usual Week In Review coverage, along with a healthy supply of 21 Questions and the occasional dispatches from campus.
As for the nearer future, we at The Ink will make some kind of attempt to chronicle the madness that is Princeton Reunions. You ought to be experiencing it yourself; you can read about it later. So for now, go out and drink a beer with yourself in 30 years.
Like an atom bomb or the end of the world or the Macy’s Day Parade. Whether or not you knew it, Reunions (i.e. “the perennial Ivy League blowout kegger” referred to in a GQ exposé last year) are coming. Can’t you hear it — the pitter-patter of hundreds of alumni footsteps, canes and wheelchairs, the slurping from special edition beer cans, the loudness of Reunions’ token wardrobe?
Maybe not. Or, at least not yet, with Houseparties a few days away and all. But rest assured, the countdown has begun at www.countdowntoreunions.com, which gives an up-to-the-second reminder of the time between now and when the May-hem begins.
This screenshot will become increasingly less relevant over time.
Personally, the design of the site seems all too familiar. That font and the angular, borderless orange rectangle schema are symbols of official University webpage underdesign. I’m talking about those sites only seen momentarily in the deepest stages of room draw. Also, how did we get the web address? Not that it’s the most desireable web address (certainly not as desireable as www.pancakes.com, the homepage of PJ’s Pancake House), but the page doesn’t even mention the University.
Anyhow, Reunions are all about bold moves and in the Orange Bubble, no other reunions (lowercase) exist. Just ask the folks over at www.princetonreunions.com, who call it “an experiment focused on age and agelessness, immaturity and maturation.”
At around 11 p.m. last night, a group of distinguished looking men clustered in Blair Arch and began doling out classics like “Tigertone Blues,” “Danny Boy,” and “I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends.” They sang to no one, save themselves. Eventually, one student stopped, then two, then a crowd. Whispering ensued: What was going on? Just who were these men?
Answer: The Nassoons, circa 1975-81.
They had flown in from around the world, including Minnesota, Tokyo, and Moscow, to reunite with some of their closet friends from college.
“That guy — see, over there,” Bob Peskin ’78 pointed, “he was kind of a space cadet in college. We joke that he’s from Mars.”
Peskin and his friends had gathered as part of the larger Nassoons reunion taking place this weekend. Founded in 1941, the Nassoons host shows on campus every five years, and this year, over 200 alums are expected for the huge (and free!) 70th anniversary show scheduled for Saturday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., in Taplin Auditorium.
“You should come! If you stay the whole time, you can see how the songs have changed from generation to generation,” Peskin said. Many of the alums no longer sing nor dance, he added, so while all groups meet up to rehearse their scales and jazz squares on Friday, the best part of the show is watching which groups have their act together, and which ones don’t.
Since it’s summer and we know you’re busy at your super-important [insert bank here]/[insert NGO here]/[insert research institution here] internship or backpacking across Europe or voraciously watching back episodes of Gossip Girl, we here at The Ink round up the week’s news so you don’t have to. Today we’ve got some graduations stuff, some art crime stuff, some reality TV show stuff, some fratty stuff, and generally, stuff.
First up this week: Alumni swarmed Princeton this weekend, as you might have guessed, for Reunions. There wasdebauchery, there was dunko (as per the Wall Street Journal), and good times had by old people. God reportedly attempted to smite the revelers, but only knocked out a few trees. Fun!
A tree near Dillon Gym faced the wrath of nature
Also, graduation happened, which is weird to think because that means a quarter of the student body has moved on into the real world. At Baccalaureate on Sunday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos ’86 told the Class of 2010 about his grandmother and to be kind.
The Class of 2010 marched on anyway, and 1,166 seniors passed through FitzRandolph Gates, with some special guests. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was given an honorary degree for a bunch of stuff, among them being a trailblazer for women’s rights and being pretty old.
Valedictorian David Karp (who had 29 A’s and A+’s!?) spoke, along with salutatorian Marguerite Colson, who gave her address in Latin to a bunch of people who couldn’t understand her:
Because few students today know Latin, the new graduates follow along using printed copies of the remarks. These include footnotes telling when to applaud (plaudite) and laugh (ridete). Guests and other audience members do not have the annotated copies, a practice dictated by tradition because the salute is directed to the members of the class.
Here’s a slick video Princeton made of the happenings. Money shot’s near the end, with the Class of 2010 on the steps of Blair Arch, doing the creepy Heil singing “Old Nassau.”
We’ll miss you guys!
And then, that huge sucking sound you heard on Wednesday? That was campus being evacuated for the summer. News grinded to a halt, but stuff still happened, apparently:
Patterson: the inebriated protagonist of his Reunions tell-all
We have a good thing going here at Princeton — even years after you graduate, you can come back and be an underclassman again for a weekend in May, reveling in all the debauchery that entails, at Princeton Reunions.
But it’s relatively hush-hush, you know? Sure it’s a huge party, but we manage to keep the degree of insanity under wraps and come out looking like… well, like we went to Princeton. Our little secret, yeah?
Until this month’s issue of GQ came out, which features an exposé of last year’s Reunions — you may have already seen a Google Docs scan of it making rounds on a couple listservs (which we’re technically not allowed to link to here, what with copyright and all). The piece, by Troy Patterson ’96 and titled “The Smart Man’s ‘Jersey Shore’” (cringe), makes Woodrow Wilson roll in his grave:
Campus in a nutshell: Copious refuse, numerous vehicles, and tents
If you’re wondering where that vague scent of trash is coming from, or why there are so many large people carrying heavy things around campus, you might want to snap out of your post-exam stupor and pack your stuff up: it’s move-out day. Everyone’s leaving!
(Unless you have Reunions housing, in which case Angela Hodgeman bestows you another 24 hours in your room before you have to move across the hall.)
And those big empty white tents and rows of wooden fences mean it’s officially Dead Week now, that calm before the Reunions storm. Everybody take a deep breath, catch up on your sleep, and maybe detox a little.
That’s our cue to peace for the summer. It’s been a pleasure writing for y’all, and be sure to check in again in the fall for news, musings, and everything you could possibly want and not want to know about our beloved Princestitution.
(But check back after Dead Week — we’ll be covering Reunions and commencement intermittently, as often as time and alumni partying will allow. And we’ll be covering the summer with our Weekly Updates and, of course, let you know if anything breaking happens.)
As some of you step back onto Princeton’s campus and the sweet, sweet smell of post-reunions fills the air, we’d like share a little bit of information with those of you who might be moving into dorms for the summer:
Old drunk people pillaged Princeton this past weekend.
Right, that’s understood, you say. But consider old drunk people… hooking up. In your dorm next semester.
We went ahead and filed this one story after the jump one under “things we’d rather not know.”
