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BY MAIA GERLINGER

In print | Published September 10, 2009

“Hootenanny,” according to that most faithful of sources, Wikipedia, “is an Appalachian colloquialism that was used in early twentieth century America to refer to things whose names were forgotten or unknown. In this usage it was synonymous with thingamajig or whatchamacallit, as in ‘hand me that hootenanny.’ Hootenanny was also an old country word for ‘party’. Now, most commonly, it refers to a folk-music party.” At the bottom of the entry, it says: “See also: hoedown.”

I arrived at Delta Upsilon at around 4:00, having taken it upon myself to see what a real Swarthmore Hootenanny would look like. Perhaps it was the time of day, but no one from the outside world was there. Three or four brothers threw around a football, three or four were playing pong, and another five or six were lounging about at the base of the wall that encloses the fraternity.

“It’s an old-fashioned, hoedown get-together,” said Brendan Work ’10, one of the loungers, when I asked him what exactly a ‘hootenanny’ was. He added: “Redneck Southern style.”
Joel Tolliver ’10, sitting next to him: “Being country.”

“Being redneck,” said Brendan. “It’s not cowboy hats. That’s like where I’m from. I’m from Montana. This is more like down South.” He took care to point out the amount of patriotic garb that the brothers were collectively wearing.

To my observation that there weren’t very many people around, Brendan offered, “Well, we’ve never had a day party section of the Hootenanny before. And lots of sports teams have games today.”
No one seems exactly sure how or why the Hootenanny got started, but my question drew a small group of Delta Upsilon members, who were soon consulting each other and trying their best to throw some information my way. The Hootenanny, to the best of their knowledge, had something to do with a former DU brother who seems to have called himself “Coop.”

“Coop was…” said Brendan, struggling, “Coop was a country boy. Class of ’07.”

“It’s to celebrate the greatness that was Coop,” someone chimed in.

“… great…”

“… campus personality…”

“He was just a great brother.”

“It was something Southern and country,” said Joel. “Why not name it after Coop?”

“He was one of the few people from the South.”

The Hootenanny was, one of the brothers asserted, as I left, part of the “Swarthmore counterculture.”

Right. When I arrived at DU later in the evening (about 11:30), the fraternity was filled with girls dressed as cowgirls, and boys dressed as Swarthmore students. I ventured into the darkened dancing floor, where white t-shirts glowed in the dark, but I didn’t know anyone there, so I went downstairs; Swarthmore parties, as I’m sure all freshmen have figured out by now, run on a strict system of division of labor, where you head down to drink, and head up to dance. The downstairs – well lit and loud – was crowded, hot and impossible to get through, so I gave up. Going back towards the dance floor, I managed to talk to Nick Rhinehart ’12 (“I like it, but it’s hot as balls in here”) and, once on the dance floor proper, Chuck Armstrong ’13.

“Excuse me,” he said to the man whose dancing posterior had just forcefully slammed into him. Then, turning back to me: “It’s better than the other parties,” he said. “There’s more space.” This seemed difficult to believe.

Indeed, when I headed off to Olde Club, I found it pretty sparse. I found some friends there, and I danced with them. Those were the happy few, though; for the rest of the night, I heard again and again that DU was too crowded, and that Olde Club was too empty. Maybe this is the Sophomore Slump, maybe not. Either way, I found myself thinking on my long trek back to Woolman about this article and about everything my editor had suggested (read about hootenannies, go to the party, see how well it fits the criteria, it will be humorous because it is in fact a college party, ha ha ha). Had it been a real hootenanny? Well, no, not really. But there was still the original meaning, the first definition of the word—thingamajig, whatcha-macallit.

The beauty of a hootenanny, really, is that it is whatever you want to make of it. And the same applies to Swarthmore parties in general. No, really! Listen. As the winner of Swarthmore’s annual Saddest Partygoer Award seven times consecutively last year alone, I feel I’ve earned the right to say this. If everything that night sucks, if no one’s there, don’t worry about it. Be happy. Dance. Like the music, even if you wouldn’t be caught dead liking it sober. It’s Swarthmore. They won’t be the coolest parties ever. They’re just hootenannies.

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