Spring Weekend

Trinity’s Spring Weekend is an annual weekend of major social events organized for students and usually held in late April or May. The events of the weekend historically were proposed, funded, and organized by the Student Activities Committee (SAC) in collaboration with the Mather Hall Board of Governors (MHBOG) and the Trinity College Activities Council (TCAC).

Spring Weekend activities in different (and not so different) times

Throughout the mid-20th century, an early iteration of Spring Weekend was also variously called Senior Weekend, Prom Weekend, and Senior Ball, involving baseball games, prom, fraternity parties, and copious mischievous endeavors undertaken by students dizzy with spring fever. One early example of these antics is chronicled in the Trinity Tripod issue of May 9, 1951: “One sentimental senior, realizing that it was the last chance he had to walk head first into his old fraternity house wall, did so, inadvertently of course, but it evidently became a habit with him as he later smashed his numb noggin through a friend's windshield. This crude use of the old bean as a battering ram seemed to be the rage all along Vernon Street…. Down the hill, heads were still coming into play, in a situation where men weren't men until they had jumped up and punched a hole in the cellar ceiling with these same, overworked heads.” The weekend made the Tripod news in particular for including women in the festivities; the April 29, 1953 issue broadcasts that “The College will withstand the greatest invasion of women this year when over 350 lovelies arrive Friday afternoon for the beginning of Senior Ball Weekend.” Before Trinity became a co-ed institution, young women from women’s colleges around New England were invited to attend the Spring Weekend festivities, which in 1958 involved a “Queen Contest” wherein 12 women from various colleges in the area were invited to represent each of the ten fraternities, the Brownell Club, and the Neutrals. The winner of the contest led the following “Coronation Dance.”

Students compete in a game of tug-of-war as part of the 1985 Trinity Games. Photo credit: Trinity Tripod, 05-14-1985

In 1976, MHBOG decided to expand Spring Weekend from one weekend in April to span multiple weekends and weekdays from Friday, April 16 to May 2, featuring musical events, films, a semi-formal dance, and a day of games on the Quad dubbed “Monkey Pharts Day,” which entailed “'events of skill,' such as gold fish swallowing contests, beer drinking relays, an all-campus tug of war, and pie eating contests.” The following year, however, the festival was reduced back to a single weekend at the end of April, although Monkey Pharts Day was once again observed.

Alongside the musical acts and fraternity parties of the 1980s Spring Weekends, sporting competitions among the classes also took place. In 1985, the Senior class were the overall winners of the Trinity Games, a lively display of student athletic ability including a Long Walk Run, tug-of-war, and a human pyramid competition.

The 1990 Spring Weekend organizers from TCAC involved the Hartford community in its event plans, inaugurating the first annual Fun Fair for Kids, during which local elementary students from the Hartford area were invited to campus to attend a carnival consisting of 22 booths and free food and drinks. An event similar to the Trinity Games of 1985 was also planned, called The Clash of the Classes and sponsored by the Alumni Office.

In 1976, MHBOG hosted the first Spring Weekend semi-formal dance in the cafeteria. Since that year, the semi-formal has usually been held at various locations around Trinity, including the Washington Room, St. Elmo’s Hall, the Psi-U fraternity house, and the Cave, though some years the dance has moved to venues in the Hartford area.

Musical Acts

Spring Weekend in all its forms throughout Trinity’s history has consistently been eagerly anticipated for the live music it has brought to campus. Over the years, world-famous bands and musicians have played at Trinity, as well as Trinity’s own musical groups. The bands invited to Trinity mirror the shifting tastes of students over the years. Spring Weekends of the 1950s and 1960s often featured jazz and rock n’ roll bands like Claude Thornhill and his band, Rivers Chambers (1955), Ralph Stuart (1958), Les Elgart (1959), Lester Lanin (1963), and several other musical acts.

The end of the 1970s and early 1980s saw a shift in student music taste, as the acts booked for Spring Weekend became more inclined towards bluegrass and folk. Woody Harris, an American songwriter best known for songs written for and with Bobby Darin, Elvis Presley, and other popular musicians of the time, came to Trinity for a Spring Weekend performance in 1979. The following year the headliners of the weekend were David Roger Johansen of the New York Dolls and Robin Lane of Robin Lane & the Chartbusters, signaling the swelling popularity among young people across the country for proto-punk and new wave genres.

Students at the headlining concert of 2011, with Major Lazer and Three-Six Mafia. Photo credit: Trinity Tripod, 04-19-2011

Throughout the 1980s, alt-rock bands like U2 (1983) and ‘Til Tuesday (1985), punk music from The Ramones (1985), post-punk sounds from Modern English (1986), hard rock from The Smithereens (1987), and R&B and blues musicians Robert Cray and Ivan Neville (1989) were headlining Spring Weekend musical events. The 1990s brought world-class acts to campus like jazz hip-hop group Digable Planets (1995) and The Pharcyde (1996), and alt-rock legends Sonic Youth (1995) and Guster (1996). Beginning in 1994, Spring Weekend began to feature a distinct music festival dubbed “Hallapalooza,” taking place in St. Anthony Hall with a lineup of bands.

Among the acts featured during Spring Weekend in the early 2000s included hip-hop trio Naughty By Nature (2000) and indie reggae fusion group Dispatch (2001). Students were very disappointed after hip-hop idol Busta Rhymes was contracted by TCAC to headline the weekend in 2002 and no-showed the day of the concert, leading the TCAC to seek legal compensation for the production costs. However, the following year proved more successful with Trinity’s own DJ Dafence playing to a raucous crowd, and Canadian hip-hop artist Kardinal Offishal bringing several excited girls up on stage during his set to compete in a belly-dancing contest. 2011 saw another successful lineup with Major Lazer, playing electronic reggae beats for lively dancing and Tennessee gangsta rap stars Three-Six Mafia performing to an enthusiastic crowd of 800. In 2018, EDM ruled the stage at Spring Weekend–or at least one of the stages–The Mill, a student-run art space and music venue, hosted an alternative concert featuring psychedelic rock, indie pop, and dreamy vocals.

Funding

For much of Spring Weekend’s history, the price of admission has intermittently been around $10 for students and slightly higher for guests, or completely free, depending on the decision of the organizing group during that year. The years when students were expected to pay to participate in the festivities have usually been years when groups like the TCAC have made a concerted effort to attract bigger acts to the College to perform the headlining musical act. One such example is Ludacris’ show on campus in 2004, which thrilled a crowd of around 1800 people, though many students disapproved of the reintroduction of a cost to enter the show.

Funding for Spring Weekend has historically been raised by student organizations such as the Student Activities Committee (SAC), The Mather Hall Board of Governors (MHBOG), the Trinity College Activities Council (TCAC), and most recently by the Entertainment Activities Council (EAC). Fundraising and planning has also been contributed by the fraternities and sororities on campus, which has allowed many of the festivities to be free to students throughout the years.