The strange saga of the cancellation of St Edmund’s May Ball

St Edmund's May Ball, themed "Castle on the Hill" and scheduled to take place Friday 21st June 2019, have announced their cancellation.

The cancellation was blamed on "an uncharacteristically low number of ticket sales". According to the ticketing website, the member's tickets have not sold out, in spite of having gone on sale over a month ago.

However, it appears that situation goes much deeper than a simple ticketing issue.

On the 12th April, a Camfess was submitted stating that St Edmund's May Ball was to be cancelled due to the fact that the committee had missed "key deadlines", and alleged that the committee were "begging" Darwin to "let them combine".

Anyone familiar with Camfess will know that it is not exactly a bastion of truth. However, an anonymous source speaking to The Tab confirmed that St Edmund's had been in talks with Darwin about the possibility of a joint May Ball, as had been the case last year.

We reached out to Charlotte Milbank, president of Darwin May Ball, for comment. She confirmed that St Edmund's had approached Darwin to combine, stating "they did contact us last week to see if we could offer their guests the option to transfer their tickets over to us."

Charlotte continued: "Unfortunately, we were unable to accommodate them on this occasion due to our own capacity restraints. We wish St Edmund's the best in their discussions with other colleges."

This was, however, not the only problem with the Ball. Our source described to The Tab that the committee was "an absolute shambles", having "barely met over the last couple months" and "not [organising] anything".

This was due to disagreements over "smaller issues", ranging from everything from "gender neutral toilets" and "ferris wheels" to"midget tossing games". Yes, you read that last bit right.

I don't know about you but I don't know what about the theme "Castle on the Hill" says "midget tossing games" (also – "midget tossing games" – really??? In 2019???)

Sadly, this is not the first May Ball cancellation of the year. Hopefully, 2019 doesn't see any more May Balls cancelled; there are already enough people on Ticketbridge trying to buy King's Affair tickets as it is.