Sun God 2010 Lineup Inspires Excitement for Sun God 2009

This student’s plan to improve the festival involves impersonating Sun God and forcing vodka down freshman throats. - photo by Bora Buyktimkin

Kristin Muench

Students found their lowered expectations for UCSD’s annual Sun God Festival pleasantly satisfied last week, as the day failed to live up to long-established expectations of debauchery. According to analysts, Sun God Festival 2010 produced the highest scores of apathy and the lowest number of crazy stories per freshman in the festival’s 20-year history.

The uniquely uninspiring flavor of the event led students to recall a time when the festival, much like an intoxicated, paint-splattered buffalo, was allowed to roam free, across the lawns of UCSD. Students reported spending the day sharing stories of festivals long since past, when students were free to enjoy themselves, and the A.S. Council subsidized activities were not restricted to tame bean bag tosses and helmeted daisy chain making.

“After the lineup came out, I just couldn’t believe how lucky we had gotten last year,” Muir College junior Thom Daly explained: “We had bands that everyone liked, from hipsters to ravers to Gleek-types to suburbanite O.G.s. The dance tent was available to be enjoyed by everyone. It sounds crazy now, but people actually had a lot of fun.”

“We showed up at the dance tent at 7 p.m. and couldn’t get in even though it looked empty,” said Eleanor Roosevelt College senior Stacey Shumacher, a reveler whose recent experiences have only increased her excitement for last year’s Sun God. “Can you believe that Girl Talk came to campus? Ohmigawd! I was happy when it happened, but now I’m going to treasure that memory forever.”

Many lament that students graduating this year are the last to remember the fabled bacchanalia that once united the hands of nerds and jocks in the lifelong bond of beer-induced friendship.

“Some grad students might remember the before days,” professed Warren senior Eric Chen said, “but only from their vantage point hiding under their advisor’s desk as their students ran amok. They didn’t really get to see Sun God. No one did. And now, that memory is dying.”

Chen then turned to face the lengthening shadows as a single tear rolled down his flushed cheek.

Not all students have enjoyed the boost that Sun God Festival 2010 gave to the memory of all former Sun God Festivals. Some fear that the decreasing quality of the festivals — the result, many claim, of overregulation — will remove the only outlet the once-peaceable UCSD students had.

“We used to spend the year studying instead of partying because we had this one day when we could get it all out of our system,” Revelle senior Justo Lopez claimed. “If the wildness is taken out of Sun God, something’s gotta give. People are gonna crack during finals week, and soon we’ll become an uglier, unemployable SDSU. Then UCI sneaks up and — BAM! — we’re tied with Davis for number four in the UC system.”

Administrators hope to find a solution for next year’s festival that will reconcile the need to have a partying outlet with the desire to avoid expensive parent lawsuits that drain overtaxed university coffers. In the meantime they advise sticking to a series of progressively lower expectations, as evidenced by this year, to make each festival seem better than the next — literally.