This past weekend was our yearly celebration of the seniors’ academic achievement: Renn Fayre. The theme was “Close Encounters,” and there were approximately 2.5 million fun alien-related things happening on campus, from free food to art projects to live music.
That’s thesis parade, the kick-off to the weekend in which seniors burn their thesis drafts and the rest of us cheer wildly. But my favorite festivities and oddities were as follows:
– a picnic-table-turned-UFO structure
– a musical performance in which two people moved around different objects that communicated via electric current with one another, and would chance pitch and volume based on their mutual juxtaposition
– a room filled wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling with balloons
– musical stairs that play a different note for each step you land on
– a giant mylar alien head attached to our stone “Reed College” sign on the front lawn
– a free photobooth in the Paradox coffee shop (I think I took ten or twelve photo strips)
– “Grey Lodge,” a room with videos of alien sightings and paranormal incidences playing 24/7 on four different TVs
– three different food carts parked on campus
– a huge and very confounding maze
– a 24/7 free PB&J station
Needless to say, I ate more than my fill and saw even more cool things than I can name here. This week I’ll put my costume away, crack open my text books, and begin the long wait for next year’s Renn Fayre…
