It's easy to see why Ruslan Tovbulatov '09 calls himself "an events planner at heart." As a member of PB and Class Council, former co-chair of Student Assembly's student life committee and Chi Gam's social chair, Ruslan has spent his time at Dartmouth trying to break the mold of typical campus parties. Here, Ruslan asks campus to reconsider the definition of a "successful event" and reminds us that it need not include the word "pong."
When did you become interested in alternative social space events?
I work closely with Student Activities in general, and [Director of Student Activities] Linda Kennedy brought to my attention a student health survey that was done through Dick's House that said 40 percent of students on campus don't drink or consider themselves abstainers. As someone who's involved on campus, that's automatically a jarring figure, and I doubted it. But looking at the numbers, we realized maybe the sample wasn't that skewed. There was a huge number of respondents, there were people represented in the survey who were athletes, who were living in Greek houses, who were living off campus and it was male and female right down the middle. It was clearly a representation of campus, and 40 percent said they were abstainers and light drinkers. That's higher than I ever even imagined.
Where did you go from there?
I worked mostly with Miesha Smith '09. We decided that the best way to really get this information -- to see who the 40 percent were -- was to do some focus groups. We blitzed out to all of campus and our inboxes got flooded with responses. We sat down with around 40 people -- we did two freshmen groups, two upperclassmen groups -- and just had some constructive conversations about people who didn't really drink much on campus.
What were the focuses of the discussions?
The space issue, as always, came up. People really want an alternative space that they can call their own, where they can get together with a group of friends and enjoy themselves. And that's what we all want. But what they were saying is that they were fine with the way the scene was, and they were happy to sometimes be a part of the Greek scene, but it wasn't for them every night. They were happy that people were enjoying themselves, they didn't feel alienated, but they really just wanted something more for themselves. Mostly, people really wanted programs, not necessarily just programming. And that can be a hard thing to implement as an organization's leader. We have to change our idea of what a successful event is -- you can't get 500 or 600 people to every single event you do, that's not necessarily a measure of what a successful event should be. You always hear quality over quantity, but you really have to actually keep that in mind when you're throwing an event.
How did you make that happen?
Okay, well this was all sort of happening simultaneously. Last spring I was chair of the [Student Assembly] student life committee. Part of the campaign focus of former Student Body President Molly Bode '09 was this alternative space idea. She was really excited about it, and [the Assembly] had thrown one, maybe two events while I was off junior year. The first one was a really great first step, and I was like, "Let's build on it." That spring, we had a party in Fahey-McLane. Everything was perfect -- we had hundreds of people show up, a total representation of campus, which to me was actually the most striking thing. It was amazing, we had people who represented male, female, minorities, majorities, people in the Greek system, people out, people who drank, people who didn't. We had a few kegs, and obviously we were completely strict about the 21-year-old rule. But a lot of 21-year-olds I know from Chi Gam who came didn't even drink that night. They were like, "Man this is awesome, this is cool, I didn't think I could come here and hang out." And that was the goal: to throw an event in a place that people don't typically think of as a place they can really have fun in, or enjoy themselves, and see what happens.
Wait, did you say kegs? Why did you choose to have alcohol there?
Alcohol is definitely a draw. Even if people aren't drinking, it kind of sends a message as to who would potentially be there. It's a kind of incentive. To be honest with you, we could probably give away free T-shirts there and it'd probably be the same, and then there would be no stigma. I think it's a matter of giving something people would want, and alcohol's the easiest and most cost-effective way. It's kind of unfortunate, but it's not because we want to get people to drink there. Also, I think it does a lot of good for Greek members too. They're like, "Oh, wait, I don't even need pong, this is cool." It's good for everyone involved.
So is also being Chi Gam social chair that sort of hypocritical?
The interesting thing is, it's really not different. There's still not much creativity a lot of times. As a social chair coming in, I was like, "I don't care what you guys did in the past, screw all that, we're not doing anything regularly." So it's honestly what you make of it. Every big event that I plan is more about the challenge to do better next time. Gammapalooza was basically the best night of my life. And more than half the people who were there didn't even drink at Chi Gam. They were just hanging out on our lawn, listening to music and enjoying themselves. And that to me is what it's all about. I hate the scene where people are just getting drunk and the pong culture -- I really want to move beyond that. And when you're social chair, you have so much at your disposal. That's where creativity and really reaching out to people comes into play.
Have you accomplished what you wanted to?
My goal at Dartmouth was just to make the student experience better. I think the ideas of including, being aware, raising awareness of who people on campus are and how they're different and what they're interested in is very important. We have to constantly ask, "Who is this event targeting? Whose lives are we making better, who are we making happier?" It's important to be aware of the different sections of campus. And not in a bad sense, not that campus is segregated, but just making sure that all interests are included. The dialogue just needs to keep going with the leaders of organizations, and with the allocations of funding. The biggest thing is to not be afraid to fail. Success has a strange definition here, because we do have many well attended events. So changing that idea, changing the mentality of what success and failures are, and trying new things, I think are the best things that can happen on this campus.
