Tailgating the Greek Way

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Author: Berit Anderson

Occidental students looking for a place to pregame on last Friday night didn’t have to wander very far. The Greek Tailgate party, organized by Devon Puglia and Dwight Murray (both seniors) and co-sponsored by ASOC and Greek Council, provided football fans and other stragglers with a place to gather, nosh and gear up in preparation for the evening’s football game against Cal Lutheran.

From 5 to 7 p.m., the heads of all registered clubs and organizations on-campus were invited to park in the U-shaped section of street between the gym, the fountain and the softball field and let down their tailgates. A slew of non-associated tailgaters also showed up, unloading coolers and folding chairs in the parking lots behind the library and in back of the baseball field.

The coordinators of the event trumpeted it as a chance for students to transcend social and club boundaries and to rally support for Occidental football’s last game before homecoming. Rachel Herbert (senior) agreed with the sentiment. “I think it’s a good way to bring the community together,” she said.

Puglia and Mike Salisbury (senior) manned the two grills, churning out burgers and dogs to fill the empty plates of the bevy of Oxy students mingling at the event. In addition to the requisite hot dogs and hamburgers, an array of Shasta soft drinks, bottled water and pasta and potato salads were available for hungry co-eds.

Not only were attendees of the tailgate party treated to grilled treats, but the Oxy football team themselves filed through the crowd onto the softball pitch where they proceeded to do a series of jumping jacks and other calisthenics. The jacks were accompanied by husky but unified chanting that was tentatively identified as the spelling out of “Oxy football” by all available accounts.

The party was of course BYOB, but any intake of alcohol was generally performed on the sly, slurped from the ever-popular red plastic solo cup or behind the privacy of car doors.

“I’m a little disheartened by all the old people here right now,” Vince Karlen (senior) said, between bites from a paper plate piled high with free food. “I have a bottleneck in my pocket that I really want to drink.”

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