Contrary to popular belief, we do have parties at Smith. As the season of woods parties wanes, I’ve found myself lamenting the inevitable conclusion of these woodland shindigs during the winter months. While frequenters of the midnight PVTA to UMass may contest their quality, their existence is irrefutably important to life at Smith.
Picture this: you and your friends are walking along the trails behind the Quad, the muddy path illuminated only by your iPhone flashlights. You are seriously beginning to regret your choice of footwear (nobody is going to be appreciating your platform Docs tonight), but you are enticed by the faint hum of music and chatter in the distance. It is a long, stumbling journey to the party locale. When you finally get there, you find it is scarcely brighter than the sidewalks of Elm Street, but you have to admit: there is a quaintness to the sparsely strung fairy lights adorning the bare trees. There’s music, questionable dancing, debauchery and various fumes circulating in the chilly air.
If this charming image isn’t convincing enough, let’s rewind to the 2021-22 academic year. While winter prevailed, we made many attempts at Quad basement parties, the vast majority of which were tragically busted in their infancy by Campo. The longest I remember one lasting was maybe two hours before the music abruptly stopped and the panicked partygoers scattered. Everytime a party was busted, I wondered: why doesn’t our college want us to have fun?
Parties at Smith tend to be low-pressure environments. Partaking in substances is never mandated, and it’s difficult to imagine one getting out of control. Of course, there are many forms of fun, and not all of them involve partying and/or getting drunk. So if it turns out to not be your scene, you have a relatively easy escape route of making the short walk back to your house.
Without a doubt, we’re safer partying on our own campus than wandering across the Connecticut River to the frat parties of UMass. One thing the student body and Campo can agree on is that we don’t want anyone having to be rushed to Cooley Dickinson Hospital with alcohol poisoning. But here’s the thing about college students: they’re going to party, even — shamefully enough — students at an esteemed historically women’s college like Smith. If Campo’s going to shut down the parties we have here on campus, we’re left with few options.
Woods parties, for what they’re worth, are a real treasure because they’re usually allowed to carry on in peace. Additionally, for those of us who aren’t too keen on getting COVID-19 (which I would like to imagine is the vast majority of students), there is admittedly much less anxiety — and risk — involved in going to an outdoor party than one in a sweaty, crowded Quad basement. And when other events fall through, it’s nice to have the assurance that there’s probably some sort of cult-like gathering happening in the woods, if nothing else. I think one of the main qualms people have with Smith woods parties is that they’re poorly attended and therefore, less fun.
Sometimes they’re disappointing, sometimes the music is weird; but regardless of the turnout, parties at Smith have the unique quality of being largely queer spaces for joy and celebration. There’s something very special about screaming along to “I Kissed a Girl” on a Friday night surrounded by fellow Smithies. It is for moments like these that I chose Smith.
When I tell my friends at other schools about Campo’s habit of crashing our parties, they’re shocked. Even at other small liberal arts colleges, parties on campus are generally left uninterrupted by Campus Safety. Smith is no longer the prim and proper school of Barbara Bush and Nancy Reagan — far from it. The crackdown on fun, though, can make it feel like we’re attending a glorified finishing school. We’re adults, we look out for each other and no literal roofs are being raised. There are only so many late-night, deep philosophical conversations I can take.
