The interior of the Riggs Alumni Center, where the Calvert Cotillion will be held
Allison Gibeily didn’t have the prom she thought she would in high school.
“For my senior prom, I brought my best friend’s boyfriend’s best friend who I had a thing for,” the senior English major said. “We were all breathalyzed at the door and they played horrible ‘80s music the whole time. I then went to a basement after-party at my friend’s house, which was overcrowded and really lame, and then my date made out with another girl upstairs.
“I spent the night yelling at him, and then his grandmother died the next morning,” Gibeily said.
Gibeily is just one of many students at this university with horror stories from senior prom. While prom is played up in movies and literature to be one of the defining nights of your life, most find it to just be another school dance that can result in questionable pictures and experiences. As college goes on, prom just becomes one of the distant memories from high school that you attempt to forget. But seniors who don’t fondly look back on that final dance of high school have a chance to make it up with Calvert Cotillion.
Calvert Cotillion is a long-standing tradition for seniors at the university that originated in the early 1900s, said Kourtney Kleine Temple, student and young alumni programs assistant director.
“We’re not sure the exact year it got started, but we know the tradition was suspended when the United States entered World War II and it went away for a long time,” Temple said. “It didn’t make another appearance until the 1990s when a group of students rediscovered this old campus tradition and decided to bring it back to Maryland.”
The contemporary version of Calvert Cotillion is held by the Alumni Association and will take place Saturday at the Riggs Alumni Center. It’s a commemoration of making it through four grueling years of college. It shares similarities with high school senior prom in that it’s a dance, but there is less pressure on finding a date and making it a “night to remember.”
Groups are encouraged to go together, as tickets are cheaper when people buy them in groups of 10 or more.“Big group tickets have been key to Calvert Cotillion’s success,” Temple said when noting more than 400 people attended last year. “Some people are intimidated by formal dances, thinking they must need to bring a date. Calvert Cotillion isn’t like that at all. It’s a big party to celebrate senior year.”
Senior government and politics and history major Kevin LaCherra has been aware of Calvert Cotillion since he began his time at this university through friends who have attended the event over the years. LaCherra plans on attending the event and hopes to run into some people he’s met during his time here who can get lost among busy schedules and this university’s large size.
“I’ve been hearing about it from upperclassmen the entire time I’ve been at Maryland and it seems like it’ll be a lot of fun,” LaCherra said. “It’s one of those established Maryland traditions – when you’re a senior you go to Cotillion.”
But with thousands of seniors at Maryland, it seems like it would be difficult to make each and every one of them aware of Cotillion — the Facebook page for the event only invited about 1,000 people. But Temple said relying on word of mouth and sending out emails to seniors has proved to be a successful way to boost awareness of the event. This year’s event includes a photo booth, a gourmet grilled cheese station and a cash bar, which will most likely be better than whatever you did at your high school prom.
With the event coming up this weekend, Gibeily is looking forward to getting redemption for the unfortunate events that took place the night of her last school dance.
“I want to go because it’s a chance to redeem all the awkwardness that was high school prom,” she said. “I feel like we’re all more comfortable with who we are, who our friends are and just being weird and hanging out.”
“It’s the best of all the worlds – fanciness, confidence and a much bigger brain.”
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