“Where do you go to school?”
“Mm, Stanford?”
“Stanford! Damn, look at you, going to an Ivy.”
I’ve run into these sort of exchanges many a time, when people who’ve vaguely heard of Stanford’s reputation assume that it’s an Ivy League school, and every time, I just sort of smile and nod along. Unless it was said by a friend who’s just left themselves open for a good ball-busting, I tend not to go out of my way to correct the mistake, since a) I’ve always thought correcting a minor mistake like that to be sort of douchey and b) given the Ivies’ reps, it’s not like it’s an insult to be lumped in with them.
Whenever I think about Stanford and the Ivies though, I’m pleased with the characterization of Stanford as an “Ivy League school that’s not an Ivy League school,” and we’ve got a whole lot of things going for us here that aren’t over there. We’ve got a Division-1 sports program that has won sixteen straight Director’s Cups and has seen Final Four basketball teams (both men and women) and a top-five football team in the past decade. We get to sunbathe in February while our East Coast friends are freezing and slogging through a foot of snow. We have Ike’s.
However, there’s something our East Coast friends do that is a definite source of envy, and it always happens around this time of year. No, it’s not that they get out of school now (although that did always used to make me jealous), but it is related.
Slope Day. Lawnparties. Spring Fling. Any of these sound familiar?
These massive, all-campus traditions celebrate the end of the school year. There are concerts with big names — Cornell’s Slope Day had Nelly, Princeton brought in Wiz Khalifa for their Lawnparties, Yale had Lupe Fiasco for their Spring Fling, Penn had Lupe Fiasco for their Spring Fling (not a typo, Yale and Penn both call their celebrations Spring Fling and they both brought in Lupe Fiasco this year — must’ve been confusing for Lupe). There is fun in the sun. There are freely flowing EANABs and uh…non-EANABs.
Sounds pretty awesome, right? An opportunity for the whole campus to come out and celebrate the end of the year, to see all your friends before parting ways for the summer (or forever), to quench your thirst from a day of frolicking in the sun with an ice-cold non-EANAB (or two).
All these other schools have these big, school-sponsored celebrations, but what do we have? The closest thing might be Battle of the Classes, and although it’s a step in the right direction, especially now that it’s been combined with Spring Faire, no one’s going to be mistaking it any time soon for a Slope Day (I’m also sure that there are a bunch of people who just read that and had no idea what/when Battle of the Classes and Spring Faire are). Sure, fraternities might throw a couple of open parties and individual houses or dorms might have a barbecue, and you can always toast the end of the year with your group of friends, but for the most part, I’ve always felt like our school year just sort of fizzles to an end.
As weird as it might feel to want to co-opt traditions from other schools, a good idea is a good idea. (And for people hesitant to follow in the footsteps of those hoity-toity Ivy Leaguers, just think of it as ripping off Georgetown’s Georgetown Day or Syracuse University’s Mayfest or any other of the many spring celebrations out there.) And we certainly do have our own unique traditions to be proud of, like Full Moon on the Quad and Mausoleum Party, but I’m sure that people wouldn’t picket against a bangin’ day of fun just because it’s not one of the traditions we already have.
Would there be obstacles? Sure, throwing something as large in scope as an all-campus event would raise issues of money, space, clearing things with the right people, etc., but we’ve seen various student groups and organizations put together events like Full Moon, Vision Earth and Snowchella before, so it wouldn’t be impossible. Those last two events could be a model, with multiple student groups working together to throw the end-of-the-year celebration that Stanford should have.
Stanford’s the best at so many things, surely we can do at least as well as those Ivies. Just as long as we don’t call it Spring Fling.
Tim knows you want to end the year with a bang. Tell him what would make a Stanford-style year-end celebration would need at [email protected].