Snookums went to university at sixteen. His college, Wesley College, would set up its own in-house bar during special events. St. Paul’s College, next door, had its own permanent licensed pub. Students would go on pub crawls through Sydney that would visit thirty and forty establishments. Upperclassmen would host cocktail hour in their rooms. And guess what? Everyone survives. People still form meaningful relationships. People do other things besides drink.
What’s the point of this? Notre Dame has banned dorm dances. Doesn’t sound like such a big thing, but it’s yet another tradition that’s been stripped away in recent years under the guise of “moving focus away from drinking”. Ten years ago, Domers would’ve never dreamed that camping out for football tickets would be banned, or that Sophomore Sibs weekend would be cancelled, or that dances would have to move off-campus. My dorm’s signature event, Queen Week, will probably be cancelled, since it exists in support of our annual fall informal. No more Lewis Crush, no more Alumni Wake, no more Pop Farley.
This is a sad day for Notre Dame. I think Brigita put it best: Rudy wept. I only hope the students manage to mount some resistance to this policy. If there’s any cause they’d rally around, this is it.
Yesterday the Snook and I were just lounging around at home when we both suddenly became aware of a loud clamor nearby. There seemed to be a siren buzzing and a bell ringing. Loudly. I opened the door to our apartment to find that it was the fire alarm in the hallway. “Ack! Should we evacuate?” We decided we should. So we headed down the fire escape and out to the front of the building, where we discovered that only five other people from the building had bothered to flee like ourselves. Everybody else was on their balconies watching us. Eventually some guy came out and announced that someone had been smoking in the 2nd floor hallway (smoking is verboten outside private apartments) and that had set it off. By the time we got back to our flat, the fire department had showed up. It was parked right outside our balcony, which is where I took this picture. Okay, so it’s not a very exciting story, but when your days are filled with quilting and soap operas, anything that breaks the monotony is appreciated.
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