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A Brief Working Biography

    To tell you the truth, I did not want this job.  It was winter of my sophomore year, and I had just been shut out of every other major position I had run for.  Magister (pledge trainer), Quaestor (treasurer), and a few others, getting passed over at every turn.  I decided to run for Social Chair, and people figured that since I was always out partying and whatnot, I'd do a good job.  I reluctantly accepted the job, thinking that I had to do something to stay involved with the fraternity.  That was February of 1999, and that's where it all began, I was running parties, and Chris McMillen was in charge of Brothers Only Events.  In truth we worked together very closely, and the line between the two jobs was pretty hazy.
    Our first production came around the weekend of Valentine's Day.  We were both single, most of our friends were single, and we were pretty damned bitter about it.  Hence the Anti-Valentine's Party, a little twist on your lovey-dovey Valentine's show.  Nothing too complex now, since this was our first show, just a lot of paper broken hearts with messages on them like "It's Not You, It's Me" or "We Need to Talk ..." that were supposed to make fun of the candy hearts with messages like "I Love You."
    The party was a huge success.  Hundreds of people showed up, everyone had a good time, and we learned one important lesson from having those hearts up: give the kids something to play with.  People started taking the hearts off the walls and sticking them on to people, using them as icebreakers, oddly enough...  About the only thing that went wrong was that too many new people showed up, and we had to turn away a lot of our guests.
    Riding the success of Anti-Valentine's, we came up with Sigma Chi's Excellent Adventure. This party was somewhat less successful, and it was truthfully all our fault.  Though it seemed like a really good idea, and we figured everyone loved 80s rock, we forgot that no one could dance to any of this stuff.  Another lesson learned: don't dictate the terms of the party too strongly.
    Scheduling and budget problems limited the rest of our work that  semester, as everyone found themselves consumed by school work and other fraternity obligations and as always, when someone else's department ran over budget, our budget would be the first to get slashed.  Still, we managed to stay busy, helping manage the Miracle Jam concert for the Children's Miracle Network, putting together various bro's events and banquets, and one other smaller party.

    We came back the next fall to face another budget obstacle: Rush had gone over budget, and that hurt us.  Still, we put together the Blue Party.  This was my baby.  It had come to me from several sources, beginning the previous semester with Zrenda's suggestion of a "Come As Your Favorite Crayola Color" party.  Everyone dressing all in one color (red, orange, yellow, blue, green, or any of the others), and that was the theme.  It seemed a little too simplistic at the time, so we shelved it in favor of Anti-Valentine's.  But things started to shift when my Abstract Art class looked at the Russian Suprematists.   Something about the simple geometric shapes really moved me, I was in awe of it all for some reason I couldn't quite explain.  Simple, iconic, near-mystical.  I was further influenced by another idea of Abstract Art, painting for the Zero Degree.  A canvas all in one color, or with extremely little color.  Or one element, one line.  As close to an exploration of one thing, or the zero degree of painting, I think.  Then came the movie Blade, with that opening sequence... And then there was that rave over the summer.  The idea of doing a party with a Clue (the boardgame) theme...  Lots of things converged on BLUE.
    October came along, and so did the party.  Many people expressed their skepticism about a Blue Party.  They wanted a Toga party.  I refused to have a toga party during my watch, believing that those were overdone.  Someone suggested a Music of Junior High Party.  I had learned during the Excellent Adventure party not to dictate the terms of the music.  Another tried to sway me toward Fast Times At Sigma Chi... Like Fast Times at Ridgemont High... get it?  No. No. No. No.
    We stuck to blue.  Blue lights, blue strobes, shiny blue geometric shapes posted on the walls, blue clothes, blue hair dye with blue glitter, and blue glowsticks and glow necklaces (more things for the kids to play with).  Blue everywhere you could see.  If Eiffel 65's "Blue" song had come out to Boston just two weeks earlier, we would have played that too.
    To cut to the chase, Blue was the best Harvard party I'd ever been to.  Many people said the same thing.  The crowd's vibe was great, people were impressed by a theme unlike anything they had all seen before.  Certainly not everyone saw this as the near-mystical, all-immersive experience that I had been inspired to create.  They just saw it as one amazing party.  So we learned another lesson: you can't force meaning on to your audience.  Perhaps it's an ironical sort of lesson, as it was one I'd learned in my Abstract Art class.  Signs' and symbols' meanings are essentially arbitrary, and you can't expect everyone to interpret it all the same way.
    But I'll still chalk up the party as a  victory...

    And that was my last major project.  After that party, we ended up taking a huge loss during Harvard-Yale, and as always, the parties budget got slashed even further.  I moved on to become pledge trainer the next semester, relinquishing control to a very capable successor, Josh Osofsky.  I continued to help out in whatever ways I could, and I continue to plot out future ideas for the days when I might run the show again.

The Ideas...

    The Clue Mixer.
        This would work best with a sorority, as a mixer event rather than a huge party.  The idea would basically include turning the house into one large, living boardgame.  Have people come as the various characters, and have a prize for winning teams.

    The Jade Party
        Blue with an Oriental twist, essentially.  A green twist too, actually.  Dragons, green lighting, Buddhas, etc. etc.

    The T Party
        It won't ever happen, I think, since it would take a few million or billion dollars to run this.  I'd like to rent out all of Boston's subway system, the T, and turn it into one huge party.  Different DJs at every station, music playing in the trains, every station flooded in the light of that line's color (ie the Red Line, Blue Line, Green Line, etc.).
 
 
 
 

Basic Theories

1.  Be Resourceful: If we don't own it, buy it cheap.  If we can't afford to buy it, borrow it from someone.  If you can't borrow it from someone... borrow it anyway.
2.  Simplicity and Inclusiveness.  Try to keep themes simple enough for broad participation.  The more people can get into the show, the more they're going to like it.
3.  Toys.  Something for the kids to play with makes for great icebreakers and keeps everything flowing smoothly.
4.  Avoid the Banal.  No Toga parties unless you're going to make it a full-blown, old-fashioned Roman orgy...
5.