A swirling, disco-dance trip into Proctorland

One never knows when the proctors will show up. We'd decided to have a party to celebrate the new semester, or alternately, the fact that it was Feb. 7, or else to forget that we'd just received the mother of all fire inspection fines for a rather unfortunate broken glass incident. During the day we'd pushed all the furniture into our now-very-cramped bedrooms and draped pastel tulle fabric from the ceiling.

Evening rolled around, and people began trickling in. The strobe bounced off the disco ball, sending a spray of lights spinning around the room with a pattern that became more and more dizzying as the night went on. Trig the DJ pumped club music through his speakers and out into the courtyard. I grabbed a fistful of cheese and crackers and went to go find somebody behind the bar.

That was where I was when we heard the news. It was Saturday night. The 'Street' was overflowing with drunken and not-entirely-friendly to freshman eating club bickerees and the gendarme (albeit not the heat-packing variety) were on the prowl. Someone arriving in our corner of Mathey announced that three parties in Wilson had been broken up. A beer-bash in Rocky had 400 cans of Busch confiscated at 10 p.m. The displaced party-goers began arriving in crowds – a tidal wave of somewhat irate freshmen rolling in from the southern side of campus. I looked out into the flooded room, thinking, "Why don't I know anyone here?"

Just then, one of my neighbors burst in the door. "There's a car in the courtyard!" he yelled. Doors quickly slammed. We stood around nervously. He went out to talk to the woman.

"What's going on here?" the proctor asked suspiciously.

"Oh nothing much," he answered. "A few friends, a little fun, you know. . . ."

"Why do you reek then?" she asked.

"Well, you know how it is," he began (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). "People show up to these things with drinks and spill them all over me. All of over my nice shirt! Can you believe it? Feel my shirt!"

The somewhat alarmed proctor backed away.

"No, come on, feel my shirt!" he insisted. Finally, she felt his shirt, perhaps worried that otherwise he'd never let her leave. She followed my neighbor into the room and wandered over to the DJ's table.

Have you seen anything suspicious tonight?" she asked.

"Nah," he said, popping another Latin Beat CD into the player. "Just a party. Nothing going on here."

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"See, I told you so!" my neighbor announced. He walked her back outside and watched her tail lights blaze off in the distance. Then he turned and gave the thumbs-up signal. "Coast clear!" he yelled. Trig the DJ cranked the music back up, the lights went down low and the mob commenced dancing.

But not for long. Soon, another proctor arrived at our door.

"We've received complaints from your neighbors," she said, which seemed somewhat funny since all the neighbors were either drunk on the 'Street' or else actually inside our room, from where it'd be a little silly to call for a noise violation.

Doors slammed again. The proctor followed my roommates inside and looked around at the small group of people standing innocently in the midst of the swirling disco lights.

"Well I don't see any violation," she said.

"Nope, no violation here," my roommates assured her, waving her on her merry way. But even that was not to be the last of it. Another proctor arrived at one of the party's other entrances.

"Excuse me," he said. "We saw someone's foot – someone's trying to jump out of your window, so we need to come inside and check it out."

"Nobody's jumping out the window here!" another of my neighbor's assured him.

"Well, we still need to come inside," the proctor said. My neighbor opened the door ever-so-slightly. The proctor stuck his foot in.

"Well, now you're in," my neighbor said. "See, no one jumping out the window!" And sure enough, no one was. The proctors were foiled again.

Still, the all-too-familiar cars rolled into the courtyard two more times that night, shooing away the clumps milling in the hallway and finally dispersing the stragglers at three in the morning. But it was late anyway. From my very comfortable position on the floor of the common room, I looked up once more at the spinning disco lights.

I felt sorry for the four parties that were busted up, but the proctors weren't too bad, I supposed. At other colleges, they use the real police. Some places, I'd heard, there were actual, real consequences for this sort of thing. But not here. I hoped that somewhere in Proctorland, the troops were enjoying their 400 cans of Busch.