Dan is a legend. I don’t know this man’s last name. You don’t either. Yet, ask anyone on this campus who Dan is, and you’ll be told he was the man with the birthday party outside of Buckley. Dan’s friends (perhaps the greatest hype squad of all time) put up some flyers, told anyone and everyone to show up free of charge, and lo and behold, over 100 people waltzed their way over to Mansfield Center on a Wednesday night to eat cake, dance to music and humorously celebrate a man they’ve never met. Dan’s birthday party was an unequivocal success on the premise that it was silly and oddly intriguing. It garnered way too much attention on Yik Yak, precisely because it was different. And that difference is setting a beautiful precedent, which is exactly what UConn needs right now.
Truthfully, I’m tired of hearing the rhetoric that nothing goes on at UConn, as I don’t think this to be true. The over-18 and under-21 crowd on campus get in a pigeonhole that the only way to have fun on a college campus is to rub up against a thousand other sweaty young adults and get inebriated. The Yik Yak warriors will complain how nothing ever happens at UConn, we’re a boring state school, and “Storrs is snores.” I think they’re blind.
In the past week alone, I’ve seen flyers for multiple birthday parties in miscellaneous locations (in the wake of our friend Dan), a poster for a “performative male lookalike competition,” a “group doomscroll” and countless others (while writing this, a “Radenka lookalike contest” has appeared on Yik Yak). These are events separated from the Late Night team and Student Union Board of Governors (SUBOG), which are both wonderful organizations at the university who perpetuate fun. The grassroots efforts to create fun and whimsy in Storrs are alive and well, and it is solely up to the undergraduate body to capitalize on the opportunities. Furthermore, I hope and pray that Dan’s birthday and the events that happened because of its nature do not fade away. It is very simple proof that the kids are alright: we’re having fun, and our creative juices are still flowing strong.
The competition for who can get 15 minutes of fame for the day will create a beautiful positive feedback loop, where the spontaneous event of the week must become more whimsical than the last to garner any attention. And everyone can agree that some creativity would be nice around here. Anyone can see the inevitable trend here in Storrs. On Friday nights, a frat will throw a party and a horde of first years will turn N. Eagleville to Hunting Lodge into a menagerie. They will end up getting turned away from a fraternity or be “forced” to cough up an obscene amount of cash for a party. This party will, of course, be shut down at 10:30 p.m. by the state troopers. It seems the “freshies” (let us ignore that I fall into this denomination) who figured UConn was a southern party school do not grapple well with the concept that it is not.
Unless there is an unwillingness to indulge in the growing trend of whimsical ventures, the only way I see this train slowing down is if there is a glut of unoriginal ideas. Too many birthdays and too many lookalike contests, and the whole jig could be up. But to my own counterpoint, I raise another point, which is that if people just want to have fun, a plethora of wacky, half-baked, spur of the moment events will commence all across campus. Furthermore, as long as the undergraduate body here at UConn decides they don’t want to be lame and too nonchalant for their own good, we’re going to be quite alright.
Now I hope to see you all at the Alex Renzulli lookalike competition, which someone should definitely make because I totally deserve it.