Stokes throws a lot of parties, and none of them feel all that different. They’re semi-high effort, a lot of people show up and stand around out back, and the common room never fills up. On Friday night, the 27th, their Wasted Wasteland party was no different—an indistinct and well-planned good time.
The biggest unofficial parties of the term are always at Stokes. They are the posterless parties, the “I think something might be happening at Stokes tonight?” parties, the parties that feel hazy and shaky and always slightly unreal. The common room leads directly onto the porch, which leads directly onto the back slope, which is where the bonfires are, and inevitably where the vast majority of people end of standing. There is an architectural instability—no one wants to spend hours dancing in the common room because it feels a little too much like standing in a hallway. Likewise, a Stokes party is one where you leave after an hour, and maybe come back again later, or don’t, not because the party was bad, but because it just doesn’t seem like a destination in and of itself.
Their consistency is commendable, and their inability to seem genuinely lame is impressive, but still—lots of people have been at Stokes during a crazy night, but no one has ever had a crazy night at Stokes. Y’know? Notably, the house drink was worse than usual, and it’s still a slight mystery as to what it actually was or what was in it. Maybe they’ve found a genius loophole by making their party toxic-waste themed. It doesn’t matter what you serve, or how acrid it is, it’s on-theme. Smart.
It’s a bad sign for a party if it’s after midnight and there are more people around the fire pit than there are on the dance floor. It’s even worse if the logs are wet and don’t catch after 45 minutes and a whole stack of newspaper.
Has the whole campus just decided to not show up to Booth parties until 12:30? It’s sad that a house with a reputation so deeply entrenched in Bennington’s oral history has been reduced to this state. Their 2014 Tumblr and 80s parties last fall were both solid, but it’s been downhill ever since. Last term’s underwater party was easily the worst party of spring 2024, and Boothback was fine, but never fully recovered from a sparse start—a pattern which repeated itself at their Love Island party on Saturday night. Things picked up eventually, but the limpid energy lingered in the air. “Hey Ya” played, and people cheered a little too enthusiastically. As they sang along to the chorus, their words were crisp and well enunciated—things just felt a little too sober.
What has caused Booth’s fall from grace? Is it intra-house drama? A lack of house spirit? Or just bad luck? Regardless, Booth is now the sort of house whose parties elicit a groan, their cachet fully squandered, the masking tape pentagram slightly lame and out of place. This Booth fall from grace is what you would’ve expected after the parents’ weekend roadkill crucifixion and administrative intervention of the spring of 1990, but instead has inexplicably happened 30 years later.
On another, important note: Selling snacks at a party is snively, rent-seeking behavior. It is the sort of scheme teachers find impressive in middle school. At their best, parties are communal and egalitarian. Treating them as an opportunity for individual moneymaking is not only vulgar commercialization, but revealing of a profoundly backwards set of personal priorities—Go dance! Smoke a cigarette! Talk to someone new!
(It should be noted that there’s something especially unsavory about hawking individually priced pre-packaged Walmart snacks. It’s one thing to take money as you distribute mixed drinks, joints or even actual cooked food—a good is being supplied to the crowd, and whoever is doing the distributing wants to be compensated for their time. But as soon as Rice Krispees and Doritos and Pocky sticks appear, we are all reduced to another frontier for branding and marketing. The only possible reason someone would be selling you these things is to make money off of you.)
And it kinda makes the rest of us seem lamer, too? Picture this: you are explaining the structure of Bennington College’s party system to an outsider. You tell them that we have a schedule made on an Excel spreadsheet listing every house that will be hosting each week, and that each week there are administratively-approved party themes that are advertised via bake sales and posters. You may argue that this is charming, and lends itself to practicality and planning, which is true! They may be convinced of this, but then you will tell them that there are people who sell snacks– complete with posters, a floodlight illuminating them, and multiple payment options—and they will suddenly think you are describing a middle school. No one who went here pre-90s would take you seriously. “Bennington has gone soft,” they’ll say.
If this trend continues, we are mere steps away from Swalloween being hosted in the business conference room at the Bennington Hampton Inn, complete with a professional DJ with a soft strobe light and house chairs acting as chaperones, lingering by a photobooth that has been rented for the night. You may be asked to tip via iPad for the house drink. Please: Save us from this fate. Leave the snacks at home.
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