University of Richmond

Following spring finals, most students visit the Outer Banks for a week of relaxing and unwinding. Friends get together to rent beach houses or hotel rooms, and it is basically an excuse for a week-long beach party.

This series of events, which used to be stretched out over an entire week, is a chance for the fraternities and sororities to compete to see who can raise the most money for charity. Events such as the Sigma Chi Acoustic Night and the Pi Phi Lip Sync are always fun because you get to watch your fellow students make fools of themselves.

After the first month of school, all freshmen RC students go to the chapel for a candlelight ceremony celebrating their investiture into the UR community. After several welcoming speeches, the students line up and walk across campus to Whitehurst, where the Dean makes a speech to them from the window of his office. Students used to jump into the lake, but this tradition was discontinued several years ago when a student drowned.

On the weekend before spring finals, the fraternities host the biggest party on campus, Pig Roast. Although there actually are pigs involved and everyone eats their fill of pork, the main focus of the day is waking at the crack of dawn, and embarking upon a day-long drinking binge. Alumni return, and it is the best possible way to blow off steam before settling down and studying for finals with whatever brain cells you have left.

This is the WC equivalent of Investiture. Freshman and senior WC students take part in the ceremony to welcome new students and also to bid farewell to old ones. The ceremony is again held by candlelight, and the women all wear white. As a freshman, each student writes a letter to herself detailing what she wants to do at college, and as a senior, she gets to read her letter.

Before every home football game, students get dressed up in shirts and ties or sundresses and head to the UR Stadium parking lot for tailgate. Arriving hours before kickoff, the fraternities set up tables where they hand out free booze while the sororities set up booths with free food. Students wander around the parking lot for the next few hours, drinking, eating and talking to one another until the police come and tell everyone it is time for kickoff. Then the parking lot clears out and most of the students skip the game and head back to campus.