Hopkins: the second annual, underwear party.

[hoosier]

(William Parschalk/News-Letter)
Skin gets you in at underwear parties
By Nabiha Syed
October 08, 2004

Partial nudity and Johns Hopkins undergraduates don't always (and many contend, shouldn't) mix.

But leave it to two physics majors to prove that scantily-clad coeds are more than just fodder for D-level daydreaming: on Sept. 29, seniors Patrick Reiner and Greg Occhiogrosso threw the second annual, underwear party.

This year's underwear party was much larger than it had been previously, drawing over 200 students from both Hopkins and Towson University to the physics students' house. Thrown together in less than a week, the party came back due to overwhelming demand.

"We weren't really thinking about it, but after people started asking us about it, we decided it would be a good idea to throw it again. Most parties at Hopkins are so similar, we just wanted to do something unique, something that isn't usually done here," said Occhiogrosso.

Stanford has Exotic Erotic, Yale has the Pundits and their naked parties and Harvard has Primal Scream But for some reason, narcissistic exhibition of anything besides SAT scores and GPAs is not an essential part of most Hopkins traditions.

Maybe studying Orgo while undressed is distracting. Or maybe students are afraid to disobey the sign in MSE that demands that they do not remove their shirts.

Party attendees did laud the experience as a cathartic, much-needed outlet for the frustrations many students face in the stressful academic environment.

Students also found that the atmosphere leaned more towards relaxed than a lusty meat-market.

"It was a comfortable, normal party, with room to move around without being 'accidentally' groped by random people. It wasn't sketchy. I think the fact that everyone was in their underwear made people a little more self-conscious and cautious, and thus less likely to thrust their crotches out at others," says sophomore Sylvia Zhu.

Most students arrived fully clothed and then disrobed upstairs, revealing as much as they deemed comfortable. In true Hopkins fashion, the attire ranged from the conservative to the bizarre: students were clad in everything from shorts and tank tops to bunny suits.

"As strange as it sounds, it was normal to be wearing your underwear. We tried to enforce the underwear-only rule as much as we could. You were pretty much shunned if you weren't in your underwear. Granted, most guys were wearing boxers and there weren't really any girls in g-strings or thongs, so it wasn't too scandalous anyway," says Reiner.

Of course it wasn't too scandalous. This is still Hopkins -- let's not get ahead of ourselves here. The unusual dynamic of the party attracted a curious cross-section of people, including those disillusioned with the traditional overheated, overcrowded frat basement and Natty Bo scene.

"Usually when you go out, you see the same people over and over and you tend to forget that there are people who just aren't into the frat scene. At the underwear party, I saw so many people that I didn't even know knew each other, just relaxing and having fun. You see the Physics kids hanging out with the IR kids, the Public Health kids dancing with Computer Science kids ... it was really great to see everyone together," says sophomore Marie Mounier.

Although party organizers consider the evening a success, this may be the event's last year, since both Reiner and Occhiogrosso are graduating this spring.

It may become a unique tradition that underclassmen hoping to help fellow Hopkins students let go of inhibitions will continue.

That would be a likely reality if people agree with sophomore Abby Robinson who considered the party a lot of fun.

"It was the best I've been to this year -- maybe the best I've been to at Hopkins," she says. "There should definitely be more parties like it."