Spring Break
Spring Weekend or not, partying links students from many generations
Brenna Harvey
Issue date: 4/23/09 Section: Focus
Thursday, April 23, 1882, Storrs brothers Charles and Augustus take a gentle stroll through the rolling grounds of Connecticut's new university.
"Oh, brother," said Charles. "This gallant scheme of ours has truly come to fruition. The keen lads of this institution will be this generation's finest farmers."
"Oh, indeed, brother," replied Augustus. "But I feel something is amiss. Final examinations will transpire in but a fortnight, and the youth of our fair school is consumed in a fever of study. Do they not require a respite from the tedium of scholarly contemplation?"
"Oh, yes, brother!" cried Charles. "It is the dawn of spring, and festivity is required for this forthcoming End-of-Week. Shall we arrange the students a maypole? We could place it near the carriage house, or perhaps in X-meadow. And we shall capture the merriment on daguerreotype for later perusal!"
And so Spring Weekend was born.
Now, we've come a long way since Chuck and Augie's day. Spring Weekend is now a campus institution, drawing thousands of partygoers to hotspots such as Celeron, Carriage House, and X Lot. But is our generation's Spring Weekend the most intense it's ever been? How is the current party atmosphere at UConn different from what it was in our parents' college days, back in the late '70s and '80s? After all, this was an era when the Connecticut drinking age laws were in total flux, changing from 18 in 1972, to 19 in 1982, then 20 in 1983, and finally to 21 in 1985. So Spring Weekend must have been pretty crazy, right?
"To be honest, I can't remember a single Spring Weekend," said Karen Fitzgerald, an alumnus from the class of 1982. No, not because Spring Weekend parties were just that intense, but simply because they weren't very different from any other UConn party.
"There were so many package stores on campus, you could call and they would come right to your door. It was like pizza delivery, except with alcohol," Fitzgerald continued. "Grain alcohol was big. Which was scary because it was so potent and you couldn't smell it when you mixed it."
"Oh, brother," said Charles. "This gallant scheme of ours has truly come to fruition. The keen lads of this institution will be this generation's finest farmers."
"Oh, indeed, brother," replied Augustus. "But I feel something is amiss. Final examinations will transpire in but a fortnight, and the youth of our fair school is consumed in a fever of study. Do they not require a respite from the tedium of scholarly contemplation?"
"Oh, yes, brother!" cried Charles. "It is the dawn of spring, and festivity is required for this forthcoming End-of-Week. Shall we arrange the students a maypole? We could place it near the carriage house, or perhaps in X-meadow. And we shall capture the merriment on daguerreotype for later perusal!"
And so Spring Weekend was born.
Now, we've come a long way since Chuck and Augie's day. Spring Weekend is now a campus institution, drawing thousands of partygoers to hotspots such as Celeron, Carriage House, and X Lot. But is our generation's Spring Weekend the most intense it's ever been? How is the current party atmosphere at UConn different from what it was in our parents' college days, back in the late '70s and '80s? After all, this was an era when the Connecticut drinking age laws were in total flux, changing from 18 in 1972, to 19 in 1982, then 20 in 1983, and finally to 21 in 1985. So Spring Weekend must have been pretty crazy, right?
"To be honest, I can't remember a single Spring Weekend," said Karen Fitzgerald, an alumnus from the class of 1982. No, not because Spring Weekend parties were just that intense, but simply because they weren't very different from any other UConn party.
"There were so many package stores on campus, you could call and they would come right to your door. It was like pizza delivery, except with alcohol," Fitzgerald continued. "Grain alcohol was big. Which was scary because it was so potent and you couldn't smell it when you mixed it."
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