Big Blowout on Campus

So it's the morning, 11 o'clock, and four of my hallmates are already buzzing. Most of them don't get up this early for class, and it's doubtful you'd see them before 1 or 2 in the afternoon on a normal Friday. But this isn't a normal day. It's the last day of classes, Blowout, the high point of the semester, the apex of college fun, school spirit and public inebriation at the College of William & Mary. It is, in other words, the type of day where you set your alarm to wake up early and get drunk.

"What the fuck are we watching?" says Davide. He is Sicilian, 25, the language tutor at the Italian House, where I live. His hair is a mat of greasy strands on one side, a fluffy bedhead wondercreation on the other.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind, says Sarah. Her in-house nickname is "Nasty." Don't ask.

"It can't be Close Encounters. That's Jennifer Lopez. She wasn't even born when Close Encounters came out."

"That's what the box says," argues Sarah, her Jersey accent coming through, even though it's slurred. She is sipping a homemade margarita out of a plastic cup that says "Tribe Pride!" on its side.

"The hell it's Close Encounters. It's Out of Sight," says Montine, the slim brown-skinned junior who seems to have more pairs of tight leather pants than you can count on two hands. She isn't drunk yet, just a little giddy. "Y'all know, like George Clooney naked?Outtasight!"

They laugh. I eat Life cereal for breakfast with friends in the kitchen, then don the long-sleeved "Homecoming 2000" t-shirt?green with gold lettering, our school colors?that I bought for 10 bucks while waiting in line at the cafeteria. I grab my denim jacket and jog out of the dorm, my sneakers scuffing against the cement steps of the language house complex (two 1960s-era brick three-story buildings, unbelievably grotesque) as I head toward the University Center and the football stadium.

I can hear the noise coming from Old Campus already as I head to class?on Blowout weekend, it's a "student tradition" to circle the entirety of campus, toasting the different academic buildings and recalling the classes and fun you had inside. Yes, you're right; only a student body this anal ("That's a nice word for what you are, Alvy") would come up with a way of getting drunk that's this nerdy. It's actually an awfully democratic experience; regardless of GPA or financial aid, whether you're a wistful hippie or a mass of suburban angst, whether you're failing out of school or just made the dean's list for the second year in a row, you're still going to get plastered on Blowout.

There isn't a football game on Blowout weekend, but the cheerleaders are still out practicing out on the field as I walk by. There's a drunken group of frat guys watching, Sigma Phi Epsilons I think, who go apeshit every time one busty redheaded cheerleader cops a flip or a smile. "Pick Allison Up! Pick Allison Up!" they chant, raising thermoses and beer mugs. The cheerleaders oblige. The frat guys whoop and holler. Then they start yelling, "Put Allison Down! Put Allison Down!"

A roving band of sorority girls comes out of the University Center, chattering in high-pitched tones about a football player who may (or may not) look like Russell Crowe. There are two clear types of sororities here at W&M?the Southern ones and the Northern ones. Northern sororities are loud, gossipy, rich, blonde and can't hold their liquor ("Delta Delta Delta, can I helpya helpya helpya?"). Southern sororities are loud, gossipy, rich, brunette and know how to use alcohol to their advantage ("Here come the Chi ho's!"). It's a very simple division when you get down to it, but makes a big difference in the demographic that shows up at their parties.

The Sunken Gardens, the long grassy lawn at the center of campus, is packed with about a hundred students dancing about in varying degrees of orgiastic inebriation to the Dave Matthews songs blasting over the speaker system. On any normal day, the people in this crowd are driven and studious. Statistically, more than 90 of them were in the top 10 percent of their classes in high school. And 40 of them will have to deal with a bout of manic depression and the counseling center while they're here.

A junior, a friend of mine who just won a research grant from the business school, is sitting on the brick steps, smoking pot. His American Eagle shirt is drenched with beer and God knows what else. The girl sitting next to him is wearing a pair of boxers, and nothing more.

"We just did the triathlon," he says with a broad smile.

Before graduating from W&M, every student is supposed to complete the triathlon, a list of three tasks you have to do, in no particular order:

1. You have to swim the Crim Dell, a discolored pond with a bridge that actually looks quite pretty (Playboy named it one of the most romantic places on a college campus). The catch: the water is green, cloudy and cold, and the Crim smells like a swamp.

2. You have to jump the wall at the Governor's Palace, an old colonial manor near campus, and run through the maze of hedges inside. The cops might catch you, but usually they're too busy writing parking tickets.

3. You have to streak the Sunken Gardens, running across the center of campus. The biggest problem: someone taking your hidden stash of clothes whilst you are in the buff.

At the moment, it looks as if a herd of pre-med majors is getting the third task out of the way.

I dive into the mass of people to shake Charlie Park's hand. He's a friend, homecoming king this year, decked out in a pinstripe suit. Charlie is the guy who knows everybody, probably the most popular person on campus. He's a nice guy, a religion major who's active in the Christian groups on campus, and the type of attractive extrovert whom every girl at school has a crush on at some point. He went to St. Albans, but he's a hell of a lot more personable than Al Gore.

"Have you seen Timmy?" he yells above the booming noise of the field.

No, I haven't. Charlie points him out.

"Timmy" is moving through the crowd, hugging one freshman girl, then another, laughing and giving everyone thumbs-up signs. He's a lush, that's for sure; as a matter of fact, he's been drunk at every official or semiofficial event that he's attended within the last semester. With the exception of the press conference announcing Henry Kissinger as the school's new chancellor, that is. "Timmy!" a group of sorority girls screams, and runs to embrace him in their arms. His tuft of white hair is mussed, his gray suit wrinkled, and his face a wide, liquor-influenced smile. He laughs, and raises his glass for a picture.

This is our school's president, Tim Sullivan.

I didn't do much in the garden. It was already getting dark, and I headed to the cafeteria to meet some friends, wolfing down food and attempting to avoid the mobs of drunken groups throwing food and trash around the room. Three girls have climbed over the counter and are playing with the soft-serve ice cream machine. A football player collapses onto a table, knocking over a stack of ceramic plates that shatter on the ground. There was a cop outside; but instead of dealing with the pandemonium in the cafeteria, he's going along the sidewalk, writing parking tickets.

It's around 3 a.m. when I get back to my dorm room, and the phone rings. It's a girl from my International Relations class, named Whitney. She's drunk, but in a bad state. She says she's in trouble, that her ex-boyfriend has been bothering her at a frat house. I can just understand enough to know where she is. I head across campus, to the Greek complex.

My feet stick to the linoleum inside the fraternity house. There are cigarette butts everywhere, and the room is heavy with the stench of alcohol, pot and vomit. No one's seen Whitney. A freshman girl with brown hair and a bottle of Coors says that I should look upstairs, but I'm on the fourth floor, and there is no upstairs. I'm worried; Whitney's ex, Jack, is a big, hulking fratboy, and tough to quiet down when he's drunk. If he got rough with Whitney, there'd be no stopping him.

I finally find Whitney, tucked in a dark corner of the basement. Her legs are propped up on a musty couch, her head lolling back off the edge, her red hair a spiky mass of gel and tangles. There are bruises along the pale skin of her thighs, and her pantyhose are ripped. Her shirt, a glittery silk concoction, has a torn shoulder strap. She is barely conscious.

"What's going on?" she asks when I pick her up.

Whitney is a small girl, probably 100 pounds, and I carry her out of the frat house, past the crowd of dancing students, past the bar and at least halfway toward her dorm before she wakes up.

"Put me down," she says. I oblige, and she leans on my shoulder as we walk. There's a sparse feather boa wrapped around her shoulders. I decide not to ask her if she knows what happened.

I drop her off at Old Dominion Hall, her dorm, and make sure she gets into her room. She probably won't remember any of tonight, and that's probably a good thing. Whitney's a star student, 3.9 GPA, great at economics; when it comes to her social life, though, she's just a bad decision-maker.

I stand outside for a while in the middle of the Sunken Gardens, looking up at the moon. On Monday, exam period starts, and everyone I saw today will have to be back in crunch mode by then. After a while, the stars start to bother my eyes, and I head back across campus to my room and bed.