Game On!

“Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.” —Animal House
But freshman year...that’s another story.

“Fuck Mather,” shouts one unsatisfied party-goer. “Dude, this is Cabot,” his companion gently corrects. “Fine. Fuck Cabot.” It’s the third Saturday night of the year and first-year revelers splash their fresh-faced joie de vivre all over an overflowing Cabot staircase. The Quad was where the party was, whether or not anyone actually knew where they were. How to get home was an entirely separate question.
“Wait, guys. I think Kirkland is actually on the river,” says a tube-topped lovely, hesitating briefly before she and her friends board the Currier-bound shuttle at Johnston Gate.
It was a night of living and learning, of the unlimited promise of youth and the very, very limited navigational capabilities of recent campus arrivals. Oh, to be young, full of liquor and out for a good time. And, oh, to be following along. FM invites its readers, young and old, to reminisce or learn, rehash or recoil as we gambol down the cobblestone streets of Cambridge—kind of a bitch in heels—in search of nocturnal tomfoolery.
Frolic with FM and these fun-loving first-years.

K. Austin Tillery

by Elizabeth W. Green, photos by Andrew B. Pacelli

On the third Saturday night of his Harvard career, K. Austin Tillery ’06 is chilling to the beat of his extremely pimped-out stereo. His room, with its throbbing hip-hop beat and many self-consciously collegiate posters advertising four years of a raging party, seems closer to the WB’s idea of the typical dorm room than to reality. The pulsing speakers blast songs full of dilemmas. One rapper just doesn’t know what to do with his car full of girls. Another complains, “Every other city I go, I see the same hos.”
Tillery’s life, though, is less problematic—at least for now. By the end of the night, he will have been nearly brought to tears by a Tom Cruise look-alike, tried in vain to hitch a ride from the Quad to the Yard with a guy he will drunkenly refer to as “the delivery man,” and even resorted to relieving himself on the sidewalk of Garden Street.
But this is now, and right now, life is easy.
Getting dressed for the evening, for one, is absolutely uncomplicated. Tillery really only has two options—sport head-to-toe Abercrombie, or sport nothing but a cardboard box—and with some thought, the choice is obvious. “You can’t wear a box three nights in a row, because then you’re that weird kid who wears a box all the time,” Tillery explains.
For the past two nights, he was that weird kid. The box, which covered Tillery’s most private areas but did not cover the top of his pelvic bone or his upper thighs, was held up by suspenders and was cleverly labeled “LARGE PACKAGE.” The costume reflects Tillery’s approach to gliding gracefully into the Harvard social scene. “I only make friends when I make an ass of myself,” he says.
But it hasn’t always taken alcohol to bring the asshole out of the boy.
“I never drank at all before I came here,” says the Exeter graduate as he walks away from the pre-gaming party at which he took five shots in less than an hour. “Never in my whole life.” Tillery says he had to leave when the gathering got to be “too big of a little party.” Though he knew all of the little-turned-big party’s hosts, he certainly did not know all of the motley crew that poured in the suite’s door.
Tillery did know one guest: the flamboyantly decked-out Erica S. Birmingham ’06, daughter of Thomas F. Birmingham ’72, who finished third in last month’s Massachusetts Democratic gubernatorial primary. Birmingham, who attended Exeter with Tillery and who is now sporting a flashy pink scarf that frames her impressive cleavage, stopped by the room on her way to a College Democrats party.
But now, as the crowd of unfamiliars pours in, Tillery and his crew—two females, one male and two hounding FM staffers—dip out.
The first-years turn their sights to the main event of the night—in their words, getting their dance on. To do that, they decide, they need to get to the Quad, where the party of choice is in Cabot.
Having made it past the bouncer, woven through the crowds and gotten just a little freaky in a black-lit back room, the frosh see a night full of promise. Tillery is doing his usual, making himself noticed among the thronging masses by commenting candidly on the characters he sees. “That kid dresses like a fucking millionaire,” Tillery says after meeting a fellow first-year who does, in fact, look like a fucking millionaire.
Eventually, Tillery’s spirits drop, and the boy who was once a social butterfly begins a reverse metamorphosis that eventually leads him and his posse to a bench at the edge of the Quad. In this recluse, he makes some calls. “What time is it?” he asks, sighing into his cell phone. “It’s 12? Then our night is pretty much over, isn’t it?”
And though he will first stumble back to the Yard, then head over toward Apley, and then find himself chilling by the side of the Charles before he ever retreats back to his bed in Canaday, the consensus is that, for K. Austin Tillery, the night can sometimes be pretty much over when the clock strikes 12.

Victoria L. Sprow

by Susan M. Ambler and Scott G. Bromley, photos by Danielle Li

“You scored them all? Amazing!” exclaims Vicky L. Sprow ’06 to the party on the other end of the cell phone line as she ambles from Pennypacker Hall to the Yard. FM wonders whether Sprow, who is planning her Saturday night via the Sprint PCS network, is referring to women or drugs. As it turns out, Sprow’s contact and social pusher-man is (purportedly) bragging about soccer goals. Margolskee informs Sprow that Mather Third Floor is The Place To Be, a prospect that Sprow immediately relays to her cohorts, Caroline C. “Keena” Seyfarth ’06 and Erika T. Hamden ’06.

The Mather option is just one of many for the three first-year musketeers of the JV field hockey team. For now, the troupe has a pressing engagement with their hockey elders and a handle of Bacardi. Exiting the cozy confines of the Yard at 9 p.m., the girls set out for the DeWolfe room of two sophomore hockey players. There’s only one glitch: Where, exactly, is DeWolfe Street? Seasoned FM staffers point the neophytes in the appropriate direction.

The trek to DeWolfe pays off, especially with field hockey vet Elizabeth A. Whitman ’05 manning the blender. “What would you like?” she asks the posse, “Juice? Soda? Daiquiris?” Hesitant to choose door number three—either out of respect for their athletic regimen or fear of the omnipresent eye of FM—the girls glance nervously at one another. FM selflessly volunteers to sample the goods, thereby putting the newbies at ease. A daiquiri or five later, the first-years are embroiled in a hot debate over final clubs and Anna Kournikova, while the rum-sodden reporters have regressed to playing X-rated Hangman in their notebooks.

Seyfarth, for one, is wary of the final club scene. “The clubs can be sketchy when you don’t know the guys in them,” she says. “I went to the Phoenix pre-frosh weekend, but it was really shady. I’ve heard that if you’re a freshman girl you can get into any final club you want; it’s just a question of whether you feel safe there.” Hamden weighs in with an alternate take on the situation: “Where are the final clubs, anyway?”

The three girls continue to debate the first-year experience. Subjects range from musical uses of rape whistles to arts and crafts with dental dams and floss—probably not what the Freshman Dean’s Office had in mind for the safety kit. The conversational flow is frequently interrupted by the rings emanating from the girls’ rainbow cell phones. Finally, Sprow pops the question: “Where you guys wanna go next?”

Sprow: “Baseball party in Claverly. The baseball team is really hot.”

Seyfarth: “Dance party in Pfoho”.

Hamden: “There’s also something in Kirkland B-52. You know, like Love Shack, Baby.”

Sprow: “I told my friend I would meet him on the sixth floor of Quincy first.”

Hamden: “Or a football party in Eliot.”

The girls decide that dancing is paramount to alcohol or men, especially the “Sketch-tasticos” of the baseball team, and thus they set their sights on Pfoho. “We like to create dance parties wherever we go,” Hamden says.

While Seyfarth and Hamden splinter off to investigate the Pfoho option, Sprow heads to Quincy for more “pre-gaming,” as she calls it. FM wonders when the freakin’ game starts. She is joined by Merritt R. Baer ’06, who is a born Saturday night leader. “I follow the smell of alcohol over the sound of music,” she explains. The Quincy scene at 10:30 is mellow at best, despite the incessant and spurned invitations from the classy hockey jocks of room 605 (“Laaaadiiiieees, come on in!”). Fortunately, the trip to Quincy is not in vain, as it yields the company of two older men, Michael B. Firestone ’05 and James W. McPhillips ’04.

The two cradle-robbers bring Sprow and Baer to Kirkland B-52, where the hosts, members of the Harvard Model Senate, have modeled their party after—get this—the Roman Senate. At the door, Meagan M. Marks ’05 eats grapes from the hands of toga-clad doorkeeper W. Lucien Smith ’03, though she quickly pounces on FM, seizing the opportunity to give her 22 cents on the Harvard social life. “Being a sophomore is sooooo much cooler,” she explains enthusiastically. “There’s no pressure of ‘I’m going to be a loser if I don’t go out.’” Unfazed by the momentary distraction, FM follows its targets into the sweaty senate chambers. Sprow mingles with the crowd, periodically taking breaks to dance and check the cellpiece. Meanwhile, Baer and McPhillips become engrossed with each other, tongues and all. “Merritt’s having a really, really good time,” offers Sprow.

Ever the point woman of this particular mission, Sprow is on her cell phone to Seyfarth at midnight and gets the word that the famed Pfoho dance party may end shortly. Sprow is cool like Kiefer Sutherland under the pressure and makes the executive (and wise) decision to remain at the river. As the dreaded 1 a.m. deadline approaches, the girls make a final and brief Hail Mary of a stop at nearby Eliot to check out some football beef before Penny-packing it in for the night.

The evening is still young for the tireless (read: exhausted) warriors of FM, who continue their own social pursuits with stops at Winthrop and Quincy “seniors only” parties and at the Kong. Struck at 3 a.m. by the painful realization that they are no different and no cooler than the first-years they have been assigned to cover, they stop admiring their real IDs and drag their weary bones back toward the river, forever young.

Brian P. Houlihan & Frank T. Ferrante

by Samuel A. Winter, photos by Emily S. Caplan

Wanting to step up their pre-gaming efforts, Brian P. Houlihan ’06 and Frank T. Ferrante ’06 leave their Playstation behind in Canaday and head over to find the Red Dog in New Quincy. The first-years let it slip that they had spent time earlier in the evening wandering around the Quad looking for something to do, obviously not adjusted to the trend of parties in college starting much later than they do in high school. A senior girl is coaxing the freshmen to drink. “Let’s play a game for shots of vodka,” she says. “Guess the number in my head.” It appears the odds are stacked against these frosh already. But the game is on and the boys pound their shots like champs.

Ferrante, a Revere native, talks with a heavy townie accent about his vast experience with alcohol. “High school for me was, like, every weekend, a triple-kegger,” he says. Houlihan hails from Long Island and he too seems to be comfortable with the process of getting drunk. Yet the duo are a long way from having Harvard’s party scene figured out.

Armed with the knowledge that a party exists in Cabot, the two look for directions to the shuttle stop. Hana Peljto ’04 points to her left and Ferrante and Houlihan start walking toward the river. “Hey, I was just kidding. It’s that way,” Peljto shouts after them as she directs them toward Johnston Gate. “When’s that fuck truck come?” Ferrante wonders out loud.

Houlihan and Ferrante have managed to squeeze into a shuttle that is filled to the gills with other fun-seeking underclassmen. After reaching the Quad Ferrante expresses his frustration with Harvard’s social scene. “This sucks compared to high school,” he says. “I think there were more hot girls in my senior class than there are here.”

After a few wrong turns, Houlihan and Ferrante find Cabot and begin a slow and unsure ascent on a stairwell teeming with folks looking to get their swerve on. Their hopes are dashed, though, as the line up the stairs is so thick and congested that entrance to the party is nearly impossible. They give up, having had their first taste of what a mess large parties in the Quad can be.

A plethora of ladies mill around outside Cabot but neither Houlihan nor Ferrante makes any attempt to put the mack down, work their mojo, or spit game at the young co-eds. Ferrante reflects on his unwillingness to do so: “C’mon Houlihan, you know and I know that I don’t got no balls.”

The roommates dejectedly return to Quincy to reload on beverages. The sixth floor seems to be a haven of opportunity, with two smaller parties happening a few doorways apart. A fresh keg stands in one room and gangs of thirsty undergrads do not obstruct access to its contents. Houlihan is prodded into participating in the most popular of keg acrobatics—the stand. Ferrante feels obliged to match the feat, though more beer drips out of his mouth than is actually swallowed. A little after 1 a.m. the activity begins to wind down and a group of first-year women’s basketballers is leaving. As they exit one of them says to Houlihan, “Why don’t you come over and sleep with me tonight?” “Maybe later,” Houlihan responds coolly. This incites the senior guys, who dish out some enthusiastic advice to the youngster. “I can’t believe you just did that,” they say. “This is your first year at college. You might never have another chance like that.” Then they reconsider. “Actually, now she’ll want to even more.”

Just as the boys are calling it a night they’re able to witness one of the time-honored exhibitions in drunken college culture: two girls kissing in order to get a rise out of guys. Unfortunately, the co-eds aren’t that good at it. Nothing earth-shattering has occurred, but alcohol was ingested, some fun was had, and knowledge was gained.

Lessons from the night: Small gatherings are usually a better bet than well publicized multi-keggers. And the later in the night you hang around, the higher your chances are of some girl asking you to sleep with her. These are maxims to live by if it is your goal to squeeze some good old American college hedonistic fun out of the Ivy-covered bastion of routine weekend frustration that is Harvard. Freshmen take note: it does get better. But not much.

James L.M. Fisher

by Amelia E. Lester, photos by Sarah P. Law

James L.M. Fisher ’06 is gearing up for a big night out. This guy means business, and he is clearly in his element at Harvard. “I love it here,” Fisher declares as he shows off his tastefully decorated Matthews triple. He elaborates on his infatuation: “For me, Harvard is like Disneyland for the mind.” Fisher, who already spouts digestible sound bites, is casually confident and, unsurprisingly, already has a well-defined game plan for the rest of the evening—and it’s only 8 p.m.

“We’re going to go visit a few friends of mine in the Yard, and then head up to the Quad,” he says. “There’s something going in Cabot, and we might try the Belltower as well. Oh, and then we’ll head over to Eliot.” First there’s a quick bout of pre-party prepping. While his roommates, John A. Wolff ’06 and James A. Cleary ’06, relax in front of The Green Mile with some visiting friends from New Hampshire College, Fisher emerges in black pants, coordinated linen shirt and black dress shoes. “I’m definitely into fashion,” he says, reeling off a list of his favorite—and sometimes impressively obscure—designers.

Still early in the evening, he gets the first of many where-should-we-go-now queries from friends seeking the Fisher social savvy. This time, it’s Willie, who’s at the Fly. “Yeah, we’re going to make a night out of it tonight,” Fisher says. Willie is a friend from Fisher’s alma mater, St. Albans, in Washington, D.C. Fisher is quick to point out, however, that’s he no D.C. native. “I’ve actually lived in Dallas my whole life but just moved to D.C. four years ago for high school,” he explains. There’s a lot of Texan pride here. He points to an embroidered cushion on his armchair that proclaims, “American by birth, Southern by choice, Texan by the grace of God.”

Freshman year of high school on the East Coast was a tough transition, which perhaps explains Fisher’s drive to succeed in his first year of college. At Harvard, he has just made the Krokodiloes and plans to comp the Crimson editorial board. Fisher is also an aspiring singer-songwriter who has released a CD under the name Miles Fisher. He hopes to play in a band at Harvard. He hopes everything will go according to plan.

James heads over to Stoughton to visit a friend from his FOP trip to Maine. The first-floor room soon fills up with fellow boarding school grads. “We mostly went to private schools, but we’re not exclusive,” says one guy earnestly. Shortly after, a gaggle of Abercrombie-clad women make an entrance and Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” blares from the stereo. Captain Morgan flows freely and the conversation turns to the oversized Head of the Charles poster on the wall and the semi-illegal methods through which it was acquired. Discussion of covert nocturnal pole-climbing ensues, which, as the offending party explains, “is very easy when you are lanky and drunk.” Suddenly, a boy bursts in wearing nothing but Ralph Lauren briefs. “I lost my clothes and my cell phone!” he shouts, without further explanation.

As parties involving drunken semi-nudity generally are, this one is broken up at 10 p.m. by the dreaded proctor. Fisher and his friends wait out in the Yard while the Stoughton roommates meet with their proctor. They emerge as vanquished heroes soon afterwards, off the hook but under obligation to meet with their assistant dean of freshmen the following week for a talk on “mutual respect.” “That’s freshman year for you,” one guy says, shrugging. “It’s all about trying to throw parties without getting caught by your proctor.” Despite this minor setback, the boys are still keen to party and there is talk of heading to the Quad. The girls in the group are, to put it mildly, not enthused about the idea. “I don’t want to go to the Quad without pre-gaming,” insists one all-too sober girl. Fisher senses that deliberations may lengthen, so he decides to override the group by setting out alone on foot.

When he arrives at Cabot the room is sparsely populated, but Fisher, unfazed by his unfortunate promptness, still works the crowd. He greets boarding-school sophomore buddies, his main social connections. At this early stage in the evening, the girl-to-guy ratio is skewed in favor of the girls, so it seems an appropriate time to delve into the murky waters of first-year love life. “There’s a lot of cutie-pie girls here,” Fisher observes, “but so far this year I haven’t asked any of them out.” Are there any specific girls he’s hoping to see tonight? “There’s no one in particular,” Fisher says. “There are a few random hook-ups, but I’m talking about being with a girl beyond a few days, someone who I can be with at both 10 at night and 10 in the morning, someone who captures the imagination.”

Sadly, Cabot is devoid of “cutie-pies,” so after an hour of drinking games and reunions with his Yard compatriots, Fisher moves on to a party in Winthrop hosted by “another buddy from St. Albans.” A false fire alarm brings everyone out onto the streets by 1 a.m., and since his upperclass friends decide to head out to a bar, it’s time for Fisher to call it a night.

Chelsea S. Simmons

by Mollie H. Chen, photos by Nat E. Jedrey

Chelsea S. Simmons ’06 isn’t letting the crisp fall weather put a damper on her Florida style. The Gainesville native skips down the stairs from her second-floor room in Thayer in a white tube top, low-rise black pants that are pretending to be held up by a stone-studded chain belt, and white flip-flops. Her waist-length blond hair makes her easy to spot as she joins her group of friends at the center of the Yard. Almost immediately, progress is halted, as Alexa L. Von Tobel ’06, Simmons’ “unofficial third roommate” sees someone she knows and sprints over in her stilettos to say hi. Deceptively innocent-looking Jordan J. Evans ’06, originally from England and Chelsea’s oldest Harvard friend (they met within two hours of beginning dorm crew), prefaces the night by saying, “We apologize if we’re not quite lucid. [Simmons and I] have been tailgating at Brown all day.” By 9:30, the group reaches Pennypacker and flies upstairs to meet the rest of their friends. Inside the room, a wooden coffee table (found outside Pinocchio’s) holds several half-empty bottles of high-end liquor and assorted Annenberg dishware. Evans reveals that he shipped 20 liters of vodka over from England, accruing $500 in fines in the process. “My mom called me up,” he says with a rueful smile and gesturing with an open liquor bottle, “and said my father was too furious to speak to me.” The girls settle down on the futon that lines one wall, underneath a print rented from the Fogg featuring a voluptuous brunette embracing a Coca-Cola bottle. Evans mixes drinks in varying hues of pink and red for the girls. Someone breaks out the Bailey’s. Simmons tells Von Tobel’s friend from home to gently swish it around in her glass, a technique she learned from an ad. “You know, where all the sophisticated people are swirling their Bailey’s,” she says. “You’ve never seen it?” There’s a knock at the door and one of the boys scrambles over to the peephole and opens the door for Robin S. McNamara ’06 and Kim M. Chen ’06. The group gets bigger, drunker and more anxious to party. There is some talk of work to be done for Monday, but Von Tobel will have none of it. “Quite frankly,” she says as she raises her glass, “fuck this work. Game on!”

The group begins to roll out at around 10:50. As they exit the room, Simmons looks over her shoulder to Evans. “Don’t come with us ’cause then we won’t get in,” she tells him. McNamara agrees: “Yeah, what happens if we desert you again?” This is a sore subject and Evans gestures angrily and remembers. “You left me for a party that really wasn’t worth it!” he replies. “We got a lot of beer,” Simmons says innocently. Chen agrees: “We did get a lot of beer.”

As the crew troops down the cobblestone, ostensibly toward the Fly, a shuttle pulls to the corner and Simmons is coaxed on board by a friend. They gossip about the previous night’s wine party that got shut down and Von Tobel leads an enthusiastic rendition of “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling.” Once in the Quad, Simmons and what is now a 15-person entourage head to Cabot. The girls push and cajole their way up the stairs and past the party’s designated doorman. Inside, Simmons sets off to find some drinks, employing her sophomore connections and making full use of her feminine wiles. Soon she heads for the door, stopping to air-kiss a friend and hug a few male admirers. It’s down the stairs and outside where she reunites with most of her friends.

Caleb Kelly ’06 (self-described “Party Master”) vetoes getting a ride back to the Yard and yells “Fuck the bullshit” at the masses clamoring around the overflowing shuttle. At around midnight, the group—now all boys except for Simmons—begins to make its way back to the Square. Simmons leads the way, holding hands intermittently with Warren W. Schaeffer ’06, a clean-cut male wearing a button-down with a pair of aviators tucked in the pocket. Back in the Square, the plan is to take a food break at Pinocchio’s, but someone calls Evans’s cell and tells them to go the Delphic instead. Now numbering around 15 first-years, the group makes a half-hearted attempt to get into the final club but is quickly turned away. “Yes, we’re losers,” Simmons says, laughing, as she walks away from the bouncer. As they continue, Simmons leans over a man passed out on the hood of a Corolla and Kelly playfully pretends to push her on top of him. “He’s snoring,” she squeals, and darts away. At 12:45, they finally reach Noch’s and join the line of hungry partygoers. Simmons and her friends grab a couple of slices and, snagging a table close to the register, settle in to rehash the night and brainstorm where to head next.

John R. Blickstead

by Peter L. Hopkins, photos by Marius M. Hentea

A good Saturday night usually begins in the company of close friends. The best Saturday nights, however, begin in the company of close friends, hunched over a steaming “Spinoccoli” pizza at Uno’s as Alanis Morissette strums one of her wistful ballads in the background.

On this Saturday night, John P. Blickstead ’06 is joined at Uno’s by 10 of his newest friends, the members of On Thin Ice (OTI), Harvard’s oldest improv comedy troupe, as they dine to celebrate their first show of the year, which has taken place earlier that evening. Blickstead has just been inducted as one of OTI’s two newest members.

Caroline E. Gaudiani ’03, an OTI veteran, suggests that the other members took an immediate liking to Blickstead. “We’ve slept together twice already…as have the other two [girls in OTI],” Gaudiani reports with the straight face of an improv comedienne. “Tomorrow there’s going to be a duel [over John].”

It’s not difficult to see why Gaudiani or anyone on OTI might want a piece of young Mr. Blickstead. In the previous two hours, Blickstead has performed in not only his first-ever show with OTI but also in his second. After his big premier in the Adams LCR, he joined in an encore performance as part of a Saturday night campus benefit show. Even post-performance at Uno’s the unrehearsed humor continues. Blickstead, a native of Toronto, Canada, occasions a rumble of laughter from the group when he quizzically asks the audience, “Do you guys have Eddie Bauer in the U.S.?” Silly Canadian.

Blickstead later betrays that his inability to fathom the full reach of corporate America’s tentacles was only partly in jest when he asks again, “Do you guys also have Sears in the U.S.?” Foolish Canadian.

Satiated, OTI members humorously pay the check and leave Uno’s, ambling toward a party in Mather.

As Blickstead and friends churn down DeWolfe Street in a protective party huddle, they stumble upon what appears to be an all-female cake-batter-wrestling event in the far corner of the Quincy courtyard. Like Odysseus resisting the call of the Sirens, Blickstead valiantly disregards the vixenish squeals of delight and surprisingly alluring scent of cake batter, and presses ahead, leading the group, now 50 or 100 paces behind him, inexorably onward to Mather.

Once at Mather, Blickstead and his crew follow the “Beer” signs down into the dimly lit lower level. Alas, the room appears to have just been ransacked by a roving band of alcoholic gypsies and there are no libations in sight. Unfazed, Blickstead proceeds back upstairs to partake in the one sober joy of a crowded room party—the group dance circle. With three other members of OTI rounding out the circle, Blickstead sways awkwardly and non-sexually to the throbbing music as only a white boy from Canada can. And sway awkwardly and non-sexually he does, for almost an hour and a half.

“I’m not really into swaying,” Blickstead notes. “I’m more a fan of flailing but there isn’t enough room.”

At nearly 1 a.m., Blickstead tires of swaying. He nears the door as if to begin planning his exit strategy. After 15 minutes of patient door-side chit-chat, the human barricade around the door dissipates and it seems that this steaming, stinking party womb might actually expel Blickstead back into the cool night air from whence he came.

In a brief detour on his way back to Lionel, Blickstead stops first at Claverly in a bid to extend the evening, as he was told by another Mather partygoer that some “hot Asians in Clav would be throwing down.” After a brief inspection, there appears to be no party and no “hot Asians,” so on to Lionel he goes.

Before turning in for the night, Blickstead chats with friends. Amidst the flurry of explaining his whirlwind evening from Uno’s to Mather to the hot Asians’ doorstep, Blickstead, ever the Canadian gentleman, notices a quiet pre-frosh who has sort of blended into the background of the room, much as pre-frosh tend to do.

John engages her in conversation, asking what attracted her to Harvard and to what other schools she might consider applying. The pre-frosh says that in addition to Harvard she is also interested in Princeton, Yale and Georgetown.

“Princeton is really fun,” Blickstead advises the eager pre-frosh. “You should go there.”

Oh, just three weeks into his Harvard career and it seems that John Blickstead already knows all there is to know about Saturday nights at fair Harvard.