THIS SATURDAY, thousands of people clad in their brightest pastels and whitest seersucker will make the trek down Barracks Road to the Foxfield Races. Good times and great memories will surely ensue. And I'm sure the controversy will spark again whether the event should continue to receive its probationary liquor license.
Foxfields is clearly the biggest purely social event of the year (football games win out in terms of size for all events), and certainly the most fun. But if you've ever talked to an alumni who graduated before 1982, they will tell you that Easters, not Foxfields, is the greatest event this school has ever seen.
Given that Foxfields has become entrenched in so much controversy over the past few years, and that so much time has passed since the raucous days of yore, the University should try to pull away people from Foxfields in favor of a new Easters on that same weekend that has the potential to be a more comprehensive, and thus better, event, and would also give students a link back to one of the University's great traditions.
The moratorium on Easters has done nothing to deter students from finding a place to have a huge party, as Foxfields demonstrates. Rather, it has taken the clear yearning of the University's students to have a good time in the month of April and pushed it farther away from Grounds, where there is a greater chance for danger to students. The University administration should be smarter; even if the worst were to happen to a student at Foxfields, the University would incur the bad public relations regardless of whether an event was held at the University or not. This being true, why not hold the event in an atmosphere you can control?
Where Foxfields is a single day that exclusively involves drinking, Easters was a full-scale event in every sense of the word. There was the bacchanalian muddy celebration, to be sure, but there was also a University-wide dance, among other smaller accompanying activities. Easters not only turned out thousands of people, but also some of the best entertainers of the era. Just a sample of the musicians who graced the Grounds with their sweet sounds: From the big band era, Count Basie Orchestra, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and, from more recent times, REM. Only an event the magnitude of Easters could pull acts comparable to these listed out of today's pool of entertainers.
As compared to Foxfields, a return to a University-sponsored, more Grounds-centered event like Easters would be safer and would permit more adequate supervision of the dangerous parts of large-scale college events like Foxfields.
The two largest concerns Foxfields, save underage drinking, are dangerously intoxicated people and drunk drivers. If the University were to host Easters again, both problems could be mitigated. Before former Dean of Students Robert T. Canevari put a moratorium on the event, much of the alcohol provided at Easters parties was provided by the University. In providing the alcohol, the University could regulate (at least at the event) who would be able to drink, rather than the free-for-all (for all intents and purposes) that is Foxfields.
In keeping the event close to Grounds in a venue like the Madison Bowl, where Easters celebrations were held in the past, concerns about drunk drivers out on the road after the event would become nearly a moot point. The distance of Foxfields almost guarantees that some drivers will be drunk, while the distance of the Madison Bowl guarantees that some students wandering home on foot will be drunk. When it comes to public safety, I'll take drunken walkers over drunken drivers any day.
Further, today's students live in a society that has taught us throughout our lives the dangers of excessive drinking, more so than the generation that inhabited the University during the "party school" times of the 1970s. In fact, the University, vis-á-vis President Casteen, won an award from the U. S. Department of Education's Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention for the University's excellence in alcohol abuse education and prevention. And if the statistics from Student Health's Social Norms surveys are to be believed, University undergrads are especially responsible in their drinking.
Tradition is everywhere at the University, and Easters was a part of this institution's traditions for the better part of last century. Bringing back Easters would prove to be a great choice for the entire University community. Students would gain not so much a day of drinking but a comprehensive event; administrators could assure greater safety through providing a controlled environment; alumni would see one of the great traditions of their day rise once again. The 23 years since the last Easters has surely provided sufficient time for wounds to heal, and the sins of our fathers and mothers in going over the top with Easters in the past should not be held as the sins of the sons and daughters. It seems that the only losers in this resurrection of Easters are the horses.
Jim Prosser's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at jprosser@cavalierdaily.com.
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