Full Moon on the Quad (FMOTQ), a deep-rooted Stanford tradition, returned to campus Monday night under a full spring moon. Stanford Street Meat served ice cream and fried plantains, while The Mendicants, an acapella group, performed three love songs and two of the Stanford Trees mingled with the crowd.

Although FMOTQ initially began as an event in which senior men would kiss freshman girls to initiate them into college life, organizers have reimagined the tradition in recent years as a celebration of community that emphasizes consent. Students gathered in Main Quad at midnight to exchange roses, hugs or kisses, guided by color-coded glow sticks worn by students to indicate comfort levels. 

Given the complexities of the event, the organizers sought the approval of the Sexual Harassment/Assault Response & Education (SHARE) Title IX Office and Office of Substance Use Programs Education & Resources (SUPER). This year’s FMOTQ received support from both offices, working with them to curate messaging and guidelines for the event.

The SHARE office tabled at the event, handing out flyers that detailed the correct approach to affirmative consent and sharing what each of the color glowing wristbands represented. The red, yellow and green colors represented openness to roses, hugs and kissing, respectively. Sober monitors in vests also roamed the event, ensuring people’s safety and accordance with consent practices.

FMOTQ exceeded the expectations of event organizers Eva Lacy ’27 and Madhav Prakash ’27, with over 2,000 people in attendance at its peak. Three times more wristbands were ordered than last year, but the green and yellow ones ran out within 25 minutes, according to Prakash. 

“This is a 90 year old celebration, where the freakiness of Stanford, the wilderness of Stanford, the thing that sets Stanford apart from our competitors in the northeast, really comes to fore,” Prakash said.

Audrey Lee ’28 told The Daily that the event was helpful to decompress during midterms. “It seemed like a way to just bring people on campus together,” Lee said. “I liked how it respects people’s different comfort levels… and you can clarify what your boundaries are.” 

Justin Lim ’25, who has a partner, appreciated that there was “an option to make it more inclusive and open, and interpret it as a more fun Stanford tradition.”

“I do like the messaging that they have right now, which is more open for consent and open for community,” Lim added. 

Many of FMOTQ’s familiar traditions made a return this year, such as students lining up to kiss the Stanford Trees, Sonnet Van Doren ’28 and Ruby Coulson ’27. By 12:20 a.m., the Trees had both kissed upwards of 150 people. After a kiss, students collected slips of papers that commemorated the moment.

Andy Durham ’27, who performed in the band at FMOTQ in 2024, recalled that the event felt somewhat awkward last year following the midnight countdown, when people didn’t commence making out.

After midnight this year, however, people were still “hanging out, having fun,” Durham said. “I like this. This is a good vibe.” 

Prakash, who led the event’s organizing team, said that there was initially much confusion as to who would be organizing and funding the event. What started out as a casual spontaneous gathering of people in Main Quad in the 1940s, became a responsibility of the student class presidents with funding from the ASSU Executive social team.

According to Prakash, the junior class cabinet led the event last year, which was an arrangement that did not work out this year. “Eventually, when there was enough noise about why it wasn’t happening… I was like, ‘this is something I’m excited about,’” Prakash said, which led him to take on the event planning.

Prakash and Lacy worked in collaboration with the ASSU social team and the incoming sophomore class presidents to put the event together within two weeks, just in time to catch the last full moon before the end of the school year.

“I think it was really important to both Madhav and I that we keep this tradition alive, especially because if it didn’t happen this year, why would it happen the next year? It’s really important that we continue to keep all of the traditions, but also make them more modern and more fit for our community,” said Lacy, the sophomore secretary of events. 

Dean Liang ’28 looked forward to FMOTQ with anticipation. “Because Stanford doesn’t have a lot of fun [traditions], this is one of the few I’ve heard about… obviously now with wristbands it’s a lot more fun and open,” Liang said. He added that he enjoyed the event both as an opportunity to get together with the community and meet new people, but also because “it’s fun to see what color people choose.”

Upperclassmen also took the opportunity to take part in the tradition and make some memories before graduating. Chenault Ellis ’26 said that he wasn’t as nervous attending this year as when he was a first-year, and was able to simply enjoy time with friends. 

“I feel like there are not that many Stanford traditions and people are not that invested in them, so participating in the ones that do exist is really fun,” Ellis said. 

Henry Weng ’25 found that the tradition fit well with Stanford’s image, as the school “prides itself on being a quirky place with quirky traditions.”

“It’s just nice seeing people out here,” Weng said.

Not only is this tradition a fun event for students, but also “an important emblem” in the Fun Strikes Back movement and an “exercise in community and gathering,” Prakash said.

For Lacy, the event carried personal meaning as well.  Her mother, a Stanford alumnus, had fond memories of FMOTQ and always asked if she was excited to take part in it herself. 

“It’s something she always remembered from her time here,” Lacy said. “And now it’s something I’ll always remember from mine.”

A previous version of this article misstated that this year’s FMOTQ received funding from the OSE. The Daily regrets this error.