A guide to getting partying right at Georgetown

Tired of crowded Village A’s where people just stand around for hours? Frustrated by those viewing parties as stepping stones to move up the club leadership level? Sick of listening to the same type of music week after week after week?

It’s a reality that we would like to ignore, but the problems delineated in the three questions have become – for students on and off campus – closely associated with the Georgetown party experience. Granted, what we want from a party may vary, but if we could all admit that Georgetown could do better in the Weekend fun department, here are changes that we could agree need to happen.

The music

A typical Georgetown playlist contains: I Took a Pill in Ibiza (Seeb Remix) by Mike Posner, Shots by LMFAO, some Drake, Future, and Taylor Swift. These songs are great, but a good playlist would concentrate all of the above into a specific time frame instead of spreading it out.

Consider starting the night with some classics 90s and 00s that everyone would know and dance to – No Scrubs by TLC, Biggie or Tupac, Destiny’s Child, Sean Kingston or Sean Paul. From there, either introduce House music or Latin music depending on the crowd, with Avicii, The Chainsmokers and Don Omar and Daddy Yankee their respective examples. After the inevitable barrage of Top 40 songs, consider bring in songs people can sing to – Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance with Somebody, Build Me Up Buttercup by The Foundations, and R. Kelly’s Ignition Remix are all good shouts for a crowd that should, by then, be too inebriated to dance.

If you’d like to figure out new genres that the average party-going Hoya will appreciate, add a musical theme to your parties – The Trap House for the trap listeners, or Ultra in the Basement for those inclined to dance to rave music all night long. If the first few are successful, you may have yourself a name brand to attract more to future parties.

Inclusivity

Parties should be about meeting new faces, getting to know them and forming with them potentially valuable relationships – but how does that happen when parties attract the same people we meet for club activities? For a school that prides itself for having a select group of ambitious, vocal, and FOMO-fearing kids, the school’s parties seem to show a group that’s timid and exclusive.

Reach out to clubs – and I don’t mean clubs that you’ve already coordinated events with. The Hoya should reach out to Rangila for party ideas, MECHA can collaborate with the BSA to throw a party of the year contender. Begin a conversation on how to improve parties with those that have fundamentally different ideas on how to throw parties. Adding variety to our parties requires moving far away from comfort zones, but it is also something Georgetown students should be doing well.

When the club goes down

You’ve probably heard that Georgetown is not a state school, and whatever crazy parties we’ve claimed to have experienced simply doesn’t happen here. So is your party not going up on a Friday? Is the campus police banging at your door telling you to shut the party down at quarter past midnight? Whatever the case may be, please have a plan B for those who are just getting started. If you’re anticipating a group of 200 people to throw down at your place, one Village B wouldn’t do. Agree on 2-3 adjacent dorms before hand to minimize the risk of things going out of hand.

If the party still gets shut down, be ready to quickly move the alcohol, as well as the people, to a designated backup party location and pick it up from there. Sounds like a simple enough task, but also one that many feel is unnecessary. If you can recover from what you believe to be an unfair shut down of your party – who knows? Reputations do go a long way, and you may be able to grow a steady stream of interesting people flocking to the parties you host without much effort.

Georgetown- let’s party, but smarter. With those three things in mind, we need to hold our party culture to a higher standard, and aim to create memories that we could later share with our grandchildren.