BY EMILY CRAWFORD

In print | Published February 12, 2009

Occasionally, a Swarth-more student will come to the conclusion that his or her life of academic endeavors and lofty pursuits is irrational and pointless. The intellectual milieu will turn into a blur, losing all its significance and all relevance to his or her immediate condition. When this happens, particularly if it happens on a Friday or Saturday night, there is only one option. You don’t want to do it, you swore you’d never go back, especially after that incident last semester when a flailing limb contaced your dubiously alcoholic Hawaiian punch, but you must. You must go to Paces, or risk losing all faith in academia and society.

Before I go further, I must apologize: I did not want to be responsible for another Paces commentary. Yes, it is loud and crowded. Yes, it’s the home of sleazy behavior at Swarthmore. Yes, you may see things you do not want to see. And yes, we are all terrible dancers. We have all heard so many satirical references to “the Paces hookup” or “awkward Paces dancing” that writing about Paces is just as lame and overdone as going there is. But redundancy aside, the throbbing beats and gyrating hips of Paces parties are such a presence on campus that, cringe-inducing as they may be, excluding them would render my already dubious portrayal of the Swarthmore social scene completely inaccurate. So here it is: my token Paces column.

The premise of a Paces party is essentially this: take a random assortment of Swarthmore students, put them in a small room with loud rap and a significant quantity of alcohol, and see what happens. Bewildered, these students will first mill about aimlessly, perhaps bob their heads and bounce in a strange manner that vaguely resembles dancing, or cluster in standing groups near the bar, throwing back as much “red drank” as they can before it gets crowded. Little do these poor bar-dwellers know that the drinks often contain so little alcohol that if you drink too much, you will be in danger not so much of alcohol poisoning, but of severe juice overload, resulting in an incessant need to urinate and a strange sloshing sound that will follow you around when you walk.

Luckily, the party always progresses with time, and eventually it will get so crowded that people will start bumping into each other in their aimless milling, and perhaps will think “Hmm, I’ve already bumped into you. Perhaps, I should just grab your ass. And then maybe start dancing.” And so, Paces takes on its renowned club-like atmosphere — like a really tiny club, full of poorly dressed people.

While I have already significantly derided the dancing abilities of Swarthmore students, I will concede that when we’re on top of our games, most of us can at least manage to look ironically endearing in an “I’m actually just mocking people who dance like this” kind of way. But every once in awhile, I am positively blown away by the bizarre mating rituals that people engage in on the Paces dance floor. Last weekend, I saw a pair of students in the back half of Paces who honestly looked like they were playing a contact sport, except they couldn’t have been playing it correctly, and they really should have been wearing pads and helmets according to conference regulations. In their giddy state of inexperienced inebriation, they sort of periodically flung themselves at each other, bouncing back out from the shock of the collision, but then magnetically were drawn back in. Upon re-collision, they would then clutch at one another’s pasty bodies and try to steady one another with their tongues, only to be foiled by the effects of gravity. They would then stumble and fall apart, and start all over again. Attempt sexy dance, fail, repeat.

At this point, you may be wondering how this makes an argument for Paces as a solution to your pseudo-existential crisis. First of all, Paces has endless comedic absurdity to fuel your reconciliation with the futility of pursuing a meaningful existence. You go, you become disgusted and judgmental, then you’re amused by the aforementioned couple’s dancing, then next thing you know you’ve had the equivalent of a few drinks (which is probably like eight Paces drinks these days because they’re so weak) and you finally succumb to the irrationality of it all and you dance your sorrows away. Or, if your existential crisis manifested itself in a more munchies-inducing way, you can always feast upon the mandatory drunk-snacks kept next to the bar. Although I will warn you: beware of the generic tubs of “Party Mix.” They are clearly designed to lure stoned college kids into ingesting lethal doses of fake cheese and sodium.

If you do not buy this, then you can always wallow in your academic frustrations and continue to struggle with determining exactly why you are spending your Saturday nights trying to disprove Foucault, or any French theorist for that matter. But I say, do not take the proximity of free booze and a safe environment in which to drink it for granted. Even if you prefer to remain booze-free, you can at least revel in how positively awful current pop music is and express your contempt by dancing ironically to it.

There, I’ve done it, I have written my obligatory Paces column. It had to happen. I have reinforced the cliché and critiqued Swarthmore’s most stereotypically mainstream social institution. Don’t judge me.

Emily is a sophomore. She can be reached at ecrawfo1@swarthmore.edu.

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