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On the Campus: November 8, 1995
Pub NightClass of 1996 makes like freshmen in rehearsal for ReunionsBy Liz Vederman '96 My friends were getting psyched up for Pub Night, the most debaucherous event of Senior Week, October 1 to 7. Seniors get lots of free stuff in that week, which is supposed to make us feel better about the frightening fact that it's our last year of college. It's supposed to be a kind of reward for our seniority, but there's something sad about it. The week is like a senior citizens' discount-it's a nice gesture, but we'd rather pay the extra two dollars and not be 65. The fact is, the university is especially generous to us during Senior Week because we aren't going to be kicking around much longer. Entering the Student Center, we noticed that it had morphed into what looked like a miniaturized version of Prospect Street. Beer was everywhere: spilled across tables, dripping onto chairs, sticking to the floor. People were smoking, in defiance of the Student Center's nonsmoking policy, simply because there were too many bodies in the room for the authorities to deal with. Yakking, watching baseball on TV, playing quarters, hitting on that cute guy you only had eight months left to hook up with . . . yep, it was Prospect all over again. For me, the bizarre thing about Pub Night was that it hadn't changed. The Student Center felt like the same place it was three years ago, when I was a freshman. And this celebration of senior year felt more like a return to freshman year than anything else. Perhaps it was because all these different people, who had since gone their separate ways, were suddenly in the same room again. Remember that, as a rule, freshmen get along with everyone, especially other freshmen. Being the low ones on the totem pole, being young, clueless, and guileless, they stick together, even if they have nothing in common besides their froshood. I used to while away Wednesday through Saturday nights with my Resident Adviser's group, drinking beer, listening to Pearl Jam, and going out to Prospect Street to wind up the evening. And though I was one of those "freaky poet types," I used to do tequila shots with football players while I watched them play video games. Part of me misses the simplicity of those days (though that's not to say I'd ever want to go back), when my friends were the guys across the hall. We grew out of each other, away from each other, because we wanted different things out of college. Perhaps that's the reason we shed old friends and make new ones-the old ones just don't fit us anymore. So here we were, the Class of 1996 reunited at Pub Night, in a room full of people we'd outgrown. It was like being in heaven (or in hell), where everyone you've ever known, from a hundred different contexts, winds up in the same room, milling around in the smoke. We were all together again, like we were in the residential colleges-jocks and socialites, nerds and theater kids, druggies and geniuses. Each of us making conversation with people we never bothered calling anymore, people we'd lost in our search for ourselves. The event felt more like a rehearsal for Reunions than a night of class bonding. But four years after our freshmen year, the difference between seeing long-lost chums at Pub Night versus seeing them at Reunions was that we had been separated not by our graduation, but by our own choice. It was bittersweet; seeing the friends I'd shed, I also saw how much we'd all changed. Such growth is vital, of course-I wasn't truly happy at Princeton until I found my niche-but it was important to remind myself of my beginnings. Those beginnings-the time before we all scattered to bicker clubs or to 2-D, to DEC or to Terrace-weren't for nothing. At Pub Night, it was good to be like a freshman again and get along with everyone. While I drank my free beer and ate my free nachos and made a mess in the Student Center with my classmates, it seemed to me that, as seniors, we were finally getting the freshman thing right. Liz Vederman, a senior English major from Turnersville, New Jersey, is a contributing editor to the Nassau Weekly.
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