Party Review: Fels says “Come As You Are”

For two weeks running Bennington, has only had an official Friday party, rather than both Friday and Saturday, leaving the weekends and walls around campus emptier. It also means that if the one party a week sucks, then the entire weekend is washed.

Milk crate/70s house parties are notoriously hard to pull off because of their small common rooms and strange layouts. The hype just doesn’t carry over in the same way to Third Street. In spite of this, for a few years running, Fels has tried to wedge itself into the niche of “milk crate party house,” a title that neither Noyes or Sawtell are fighting for. 

“Fels Like Teen Spirit” is admittedly a great party theme title, and it gave a decent party to match. A lot of students on campus enjoy grunge, or whatever they think that means. The decor stuck solidly to the safety of “grunge” equals “Nirvana.” Most students’ style choices settled somewhere between a late 2010s goth and 2014 tumblr dashboard inspiration for the “grunge” theme. Flannels and jeans—really the only thing that’s in the grunge uniform— just doesn’t say “party,” I guess. At least no one wore the $80 tie-dye pink Nirvana sweatshirt for sorority girls.

Structuring your party around grunge is risky since it’s less dance music and more “head-bobbing” music. “Old-heads”—fading middle-aged men—and their sons would probably critique Fels’ music choices as “not grunge” and separate the music into a truly irritating amount of genres that defined three decades ago, but the music lineup managed to crowdsource enough of a 90s milieu that didn’t just turn the night into a horrible recreation of MTV Unplugged.

The party stayed strong up until the very end when everyone finally cleared out of the smoky common room, satisfied that they had proved they weren’t posers who could only name three Nirvana songs.

Saturday was filled in with a few unofficial parties here and there to tide students over, including an encore at Fels with a more diverse set of music that still retained some of Friday’s trappings. We can only hope the rut of front loaded weekends will end soon.