Annie Rittgers '09, 2009 Class Council president, said she hopes that this year's Fieldstock will serve as "a precedent as a party weekend on the level of Green Key" for future summers and that everyone has fun during the festivities.
Rittgers said that the event's planners looked at this weekend as if it were the first Fieldstock weekend ever, since last year's event only included a chariot race, not the full Summer Olympics planned for this year. The IFC and the Assembly were originally each planning separate Olympics-type events for this summer's Fieldstock, and the two groups decided to merge their plans together and create the Summer Olympics as one of the focal points for the weekend. The planners also kept the idea of a chariot race, which began last year after being discontinued for 22 years.
However, interviews with students revealed that creating the kind of buzz for Fieldstock that once swirled around Tubestock is easier said than done.
"I don't even know much about it," Steve Pan '09 said. "I guess it really never crossed my mind."
To raise awareness for the various events that will be held next weekend, the 2009 Class Council and Student Assembly sent e-mail messages to sophomores that included information about the different components of the Summer Olympics and other events that will mark the Fieldstock weekend.
"I think advertising for this type of thing has to happen very intensely right before it," Rittgers said. She added that more information about the weekend's schedule will be sent out as the week progresses.
"We've blitzed out personally to different [Greek] houses on campus and different off-campus houses," said Molly Bode '09, the co-chair of the Assembly's Fieldstock Committee. "We're going to be tabling in Food Court tomorrow. Every single president and social chair has been blitzed out to about chariots."
According to Pan, the e-mails sent out so far hardly sparked his attention.
"I didn't really read them too closely," he said.
Not everyone shares Pan's apathy, however.
"I'm very optimistic about it," Sander Duncan '09 said. "I'm definitely disappointed that Tubestock's not happening anymore, but I'm happy that we found a way to at least somewhat replace it."
Duncan said that he was hoping to participate in many of the weekend's scheduled activities.
"I'm trying to get a team together for the Olympics as well as the chariot race," he said. "Beyond that I'm just trying to go with the flow and enjoy myself."
Though Duncan expects Fieldstock to be less rambunctious than Homecoming, Winter Carnival or Green Key weekends, he said that having a festival weekend during the summer -- when the student body is comprised of predominantly sophomores -- has its advantages.
"It will definitely be less 'ragey' [than other festival weekends]," he said. "I don't think it will compare in the 'debaucherous scope.' But what I think will be nice with it is that we're here with our class, and I think that will help compensate for the lack of craziness that other weekends have."
Kat Andrews '09 agreed.
"Homecoming is always such a highlight because of the bonfire, but I think that the Summer Olympics and other weekend activities will be great for our class to have time spent together in a fun, relaxed way," she said. "In the other [festival weekends] there aren't as many fun scheduled activities as there are for Fieldstock. It should be something different and be a special occasion and hopefully enough people will get into it."
Still, even the students expressing optimism for Fieldstock weekend admitted that they still wished Tubestock were taking place next weekend -- not its replacement.
"I was just on the Sophomores from the Source trip and we were like 'this must be what Tubestock is like,'" Duncan said. "It was a great time."
Joshua Jacobson '09 said that while he was aware of many of the planned Fieldstock activities, he was not yet sure in which, if any, he would participate.
"If some guys in my frat do stuff, I'll join them, but right now I'm not really planning on anything," Jacobson, a member of Alpha Chi Alpha fraternity, said. "It's just another weekend. I mean, I hope that the sophomores make it into an awesome weekend but my expectations are pretty low."
