Sunday, January 22, 2006

Formals - the end of an era

Ever since I've been at Trevs, formal meals have been a big part of the social life. Consistantly voted the best social event in college, they fall every other Thursday during term time and involve a served meal with formal wear and gowns and the traditional bottle of wine. The last major change to formals happened just before I arrived at college when they were reduced from 1 a week to 1 every 2 weeks. Following consistant damge and lots of vomit, the combined hand of the JCR exec and SSC has been forced and we have brought in a rule stating that a maximum of half a bottle of wine per person may be brought to formals from now on. In addition, anybody appearing drunk will not be admitted and the bar will not offer neat shots afterwards and are going to have a crack down on serving drunk people (which is actually illegal). I've known about this for a while as we had a full afternoon/evening's worth of SSC and SSC/exec meetings yesterday, but we were essentially bound by an NDA until the JCR meeting tonight.

So there it is - a tradition that's been here since I started has now ended and is unlikely to ever return as every other college in Durham has already adopted this scheme. Still - we got 61/2 years of getting pretty smashed so I can't be too bitter. The only worry is that it may fall to the SSC to place wine on the tables which will mean dishing out over 100 bottles per formal...

1 comment:

Luciano Howard said...

This is sad, but alas inevitable, I feel. Having seen 7 years of Trevs, and Durham, the whole University was becoming rowdier; vandalism and public acts of disorder were becoming more frequent. Maybe because more people were in the Uni, or maybe because those they were letting in were idiots?

Whichever, if the students can't look after theirs and others' property, then they don't deserve a 'proper' formal. Just a shame that those who can, miss out.

I don't know about that formal change from before you arrived though....it wasn't that frequent in my first year, and I definitely enjoyed formals that year. Excellent.

Lue.