This coming weekend is the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, the famous festival that was a defining moment of the hippie movement. I'd like to say that I'll be doing something awesome and revolutionary to celebrate the occasion, but, sadly, the closest I'll come is watching footage of the concert. The closest Dartmouth came to celebrating Woodstock was the "big weekend" of Fieldstock. And this, my friends, is a travesty.
Woodstock was, among other things, a celebration of a counterculture. Almost half a million people flooded into Bethel, N.Y. for three days of peace and music. So many people went to the festival that the New York State Thruway was closed all the way down to the George Washington Bridge. The attendees withstood rain and mud and hunger just to enjoy the music. Despite the bohemian, drug-abusing tendencies of the crowd, the police even cooperated, helping to provide food and shelter for those in need a testament to the energy of that crowd.
Tubestock was a continuation of that same energy. Every summer, hundreds of Dartmouth students organized themselves for one perfect Saturday. The College never officially sponsored the event, although they did lend their support by having Safety and Security monitor the festivities both on land and on boats. Students built floats, came together, got wet, got drunk and then dispersed. There was even (gasp!) public nudity.
The magic of these two events is that the participants, not the authorities, made them what they were. Sure, the authorities were complicit, but the motivation was intrinsic.
Fieldstock is the exact opposite. It is the College's attempt to shove a "big weekend" down our throats. Amy Newcomb, former assistant director of Collis Center and Student Activities, even hopes to one day make it as iconic as Green Key. ("Fieldstock features pie-throwing competition, races," Aug. 12, 2008) But iconic on their terms, not ours.
We should all be ashamed of two things that happened over Fieldstock. The first is the Kool-Aid boat races. We all bought into the College's effort to make a non-alcoholic big weekend so much that many members of the Greek system, the figurehead of the drinking culture on campus, sent teams to do Kool-Aid boat races. We, both literally and figuratively, drank the Kool-Aid and killed the Woodstock/Tubestock legacy.
Second, we failed to have any big parties. What is a big weekend without big parties? Any large gatherings were dry, hushed-up or broken up. Because there aren't enough 21-year-olds on campus to justify allowing registered parties where alcohol can be served, there is a 40-person cap on wet events to avoid registering the event with the College because of Social Event Management Procedures. Sure, there were many small gatherings, but nothing was big enough to do justice to a big party weekend. Forty years ago so many people went to Woodstock that it shut down an entire freeway. Meanwhile, we let Safety and Security intimidate us into only gathering publicly in groups of less than 40.
The resources existed for us to make Fieldstock amazing. Both Greek houses and individuals have the time, money and motivation to do something truly magical with a weekend, especially one that we all agree is going to be big. But it is important that we pick the weekend, and pick the activities.
In my mind, a $250-donation to charity is the only good thing that came out of Fieldstock. But when I think about all of the money spent on barbecues, chariots, Kool-Aid and cover bands, $250 seems like a trifling amount of money. We would've been much better off giving all the money that went into this "big weekend" to charity. Or, if we wanted to be selfish and have a good time, which is par for the course as college students, then we could at least have used the money to put on events that we wanted, on our terms. Events with beer, not Kool-Aid. Hopefully now that we're out of the specter of a dry "big weekend," we'll be able to reignite the magic of student-run, student-sponsored and unregulated festivities.
