A Friday night Leigh party which, despite unfavorable weather, was inexplicably held outside and then frantically relocated to the common room partway through the night because the energy was terrible? Excuse me, you’ll have to more specific. Do you mean the spring 2024 All in the FamLeigh party, or their most recent SLeighpover from Friday night? Because that exact thing happened at both.
At this point, it’s a track record so poor it’s a little odd. Is there some eternal optimist who always wants to believe the weather will be better than it is? A house-wide aversion to moving furniture? It’s not like Leigh parties have always been so terrible—their 2016 and BLeighed parties, from March 2024 and December 2023 respectively, were well-attended and basically unobjectionable. This time, they even had loud, functional speakers, visible advertising outside DHall, and a simple but fun theme. Who knows—if the party had been inside from the get-go, maybe everything would have been fine. It’s still unclear why any house would decide to have an outdoor party next to an open construction pit, even if the weather was permitting.
But as it was, everyone had to stand in the rain for two hours getting wet before the decision was finally made to take down the speakers and tell everyone to go inside, and at that point, there was really no saving things. Most people went to the common room, and stood there for a little bit, and left. There was more standing than you could believe. The projector projected uninterrupted by dancing bodies. Come on, Leigh. You can do better.
But the weekend was not without hope. Thanks to Dewey’s Saturday wedding party, we can officially say we have had the first truly great party of the term. A common room so packed you had to literally push people out of the way to walk around it, DJ sets with music that was fun, good, and danceable, a fire outside and everyone looking beautiful in their formalwear—what more could you possibly want? Someone finally figured out how to get speakers that are loud enough to make your ears hurt again. No one was selling snacks, but if they had been, it wouldn’t have mattered. The now-signature Dewey slow dance made its appearance as the second-to-last song of the night. Cinnamon the bear got to have a wedding march—Shhhhh! We do, Dewey. We do.
Parties like Dewey do make you think, though: is it really that hard to throw a relatively good party? When you’re a lawn house equipped with an open, large common room and space to mingle outside, you really only need to make sure the music pulls through and you’re basically good to go (come on, Kilpat and Booth). Even if it’s not the craziest night of your life, you’re at least not going to walk away feeling like you wasted hours being there. There is no denying what has become truly apparent this term: people will probably respond to your party better if it is inside. Party law: You can always go stand around outside if the party is indoors, but you can’t get much out of randomly standing in a house’s empty common room when they’re set up outside.
Oh, well. There have been many parties as terrible as Leigh and as fun as Dewey. There are going to be a lot more, and they’re going to be more or less the same, which is basically how it should be—the same core thing, again and again, in different places and clothes. Now, stay tuned for next week, where we’ll delve into such novel topics as: Can Noyes finally throw a party that isn’t a little weird? Can a party be fun if the house that throws it is a little… nontraditional? We’re looking at you, Welling. And most importantly—how will the architecture of the houses play into all of this?
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