Natalie Wright untangles Toga Party

By: Natalie Wright

Let me first quote one of the best university movies of all time, Animal House: “Double secret probation????!!!! You know what we gotta do? Toga Party. They’re going to nail us for whatever we do, so we might as well have a good time! TOGA TOGA TOGA TOGA!”

As a college, we are pretty damn privileged with the number of great events we have to look forward to each year, and it goes without saying that Toga Party is near the top of that list.

Having experienced three Frosh Weeks over the course of my university career, I can safely say that this past one was fantastic. Frosh Week is probably the most intensive week of bonding, socializing, partying, and learning that Trin students ever experience. Undoubtedly a lot of this bonding comes from allowing yourself to let loose and do something hilariously grimace-inducing, which Toga Party induces extremely well (as exemplified in Animal House).

We saw, for example, a frosh jump out the second floor Welch common room window to avoid an awkward moment with a girl, and Michael Humeniuk pierce his ear with a 100% hygienic safety pin. Well, it’s certainly one way to keep some extra pins on hand for when that tin foil toga disintegrates.

From an upper year’s standpoint, Toga Party is the event during the year that allows us to get a better understanding of the Frosh group’s personality as a whole. From what I observed, this year’s frosh group is wickedly outgoing! Everyone was smiling, talking, and dancing like they just didn’t care.

Now, lets talk Togas. Toga Party is an awesome time for people to show off who they are, since it is pretty much mandatory that you craft your outfit from scratch, so I was very pleased to look out into the crowd and not see a sea of white, token togas. Yahoo, some creativity and balls! I absolutely, positively, L-O-V-E when individuals throw themselves into something to make it truly unique.

Some togas were seriously inventive. One frosh used a sleeping bag tied around his waist to make a structured, puffy skirt, and another sacrificed his lion bedspread for the Greek look. I was even more impressed to see Aina Grover stylishly pull off changing her Trin laundry bag into a well-made minimalist Toga.

Some of the more experienced upper years such as Jason Qian inspired all as he masterfully made his toga out of garbage bags – very ‘Derelicte’. Certainly a trend appeared as Daniel Bennett and Aurore Mathys both wonderfully bent clothes hangers to structure their toga! I believe they are crowned this year’s King and Queen of Toga creations.

I also saw great color blocking, with individuals using different colored sheets to create tops and bottoms. Taking a more conservative feel, another trend was definitely the draped toga. This was a nod to this year’s ever-popular dress cut: short in the front while draped longer at the back, a great way to cleverly show off those legs!

All this being said, most togas were off by the end of the night, possibly from too much dancing, but probably from other unprintable mischief… a sign of a good toga party.

Undoubtedly, this Toga Party would not have been half the success it was without our resident spinning geniuses Geoff Harricks and Cailen McQuattie. With Geoff spinning the opening set, and Cailen taking us right up until ‘Don’t Stop Believing’, we got just theright amount of funk to boogie down to, with some classic electro-pop like Mord Fustang and Wolfgang Gartner to make the quad shake. When ‘Lady Hear Me Tonight’ came on, everyone

I over-heard a fantastic conversation between two frosh speaking about their mutual interests in computer science, culminating with one of the guys exclaiming ‘Man, I LOVE you!! I’m so happy you came to Trin!!’ Getting to dress up, yell about mutual interests over loud music, dance the night away to amazing summer tunes, and just appreciate where you are and who you are with, is the sign of a pretty bloody fantastic party. Well done, exec! TOGA! TOGA! TOGA!