"I am mortified," is how Jon Carty '10 responded when The Mirror approached because we believed he has attended the most formals of anyone currently on campus. The former Theta Delt social chair calls this a "dubious" honor. He has "no idea" just how many formals he's been to here at Dartmouth.
"Four years go by in a blur and so do formals," Carty said.
He believes he's been to so many because "that's what happens when you're the ultimate back-up date" who is "always up for a last minute formal invite."
Who is going pass up a blast of a bus ride and a free, three course dinner? Not Jon Carty he loves formals.
Carty attended his first formal his freshman Spring (07S prehistoric) when he served as the escort to the formal chair of a sorority, grooving and moving with a $12,000 facility fee stuffed in his jacket pocket. From that night, on Carty earned his stripes as a battle-scarred formal veteran, racking up invites to Lake Morey and other exotic formal destinations.
He quickly developed into a coveted formal companion, as Kappa Delta Epsilon Amanda Marston '10 can attest.
"Jon Carty is the ultimate formal date," Marston said. "If I want to invite Jon Carty, I have to plan three weeks in advance."
Carty's "dance skills" are why Marston and many others find him so desirable, she said.
According to Hilary Becker '10, Carty's pull is such that Kappa Kappa Gamma rescheduled it's Fall formal last November because he was speaking at the Men of Dartmouth panel the original night. Carty refutes this, saying, that it was rescheduled "because the girls wanted to be able to attend and show solidarity for [that] campus event."
When prompted to discuss his favorite formal experience, Carty became misty-eyed over the glory days at Bates Mansion, a long-time preferred formal setting. Carty fondly recalled enjoying its open bar and dancing the night away against the bucolic backdrop of the verdant Vermont countryside all of which came crashing to a bitter end when the estate changed management, and the new owners declined to take on the liability of Dartmouth formals.
Carty sympathized with how hard it is to find a place that can accommodate and handle a horde of drunken Dartmouth undergrads these days. A formal is, according to Carty, "a force to be reckoned with."
