The GSA’s pre-Valentine’s Red Light, Green Light party was held last Friday, February 11. The basic premise was this: you wear red if you’re taken or are not looking for romance, green if you’re rarin’ for romance, and yellow if… “it’s complicated”.
While many grad students showed their true colours, others were a little more… reserved. One group of 6 students, all clad in black, informed me that the GSA is behind the times and black is actually the new red, yellow, AND green. Ahh, black. The colour of angst and mystery. I’ll pass this valuable info on to the next VP Student Life. We might have to host a black light party in the future!
Among the students who did wear red, yellow, or green, we had 7 enter an informal GSA contest. Basically, at 9:30pm, everyone who wanted to compete in a colour category for a chance to win a $50 gift certificate to the Last Defence Lounge was permitted to do so. Winners were determined by the amount of applause, whooping, hollering, screaming, chanting etc. that they received.
Two lovely ladies tied for first place in the red category (a $50 gift certificate each to the Last Defence Lounge). This is where the night began and although the tie was unexpected, it was the most straightforward part of the contest.
Next came our yellow category, which consisted of one true yellow, a yellow-green, and …. an orange??? (Okay so he did have a yellow ribbon tied, a la Rambo, around his head… but still!!!) Very strange indeed, but it was all in good fun so the show went on. Mr. Orange gave a fascinating speech about his vacillation between raw red passion and yellow indecision. Though I thought his speech had merit, the crowd, sadly, was not in agreement. Mr. Yellow, the $50 winner for the yellow category, oddly enough, didn’t want to participate. His friends forced him to the centre of the room much to his chagrin, and started chanting his name. I also started chanting his name into the microphone in support of his participation. Or what I thought was his name. But that’s another story. Mr. Yellow-Green didn’t receive quite as much applause as Mr. Yellow, but he was still a crowd favorite, and he had a really cool hat, so he got $25.
Now for the Green category. We had 2 participants. One was clad in various shades of green, from head to toe, and the other, a certain “Chris”, was… absent? Wait a minute, you can’t have a competition with just one contestant! I revealed to my fellow grad students that “Chris” had left the building and as a result Mr. Head-to-Toe Green was the winner. Like a flash of lightning, a young man wearing a much-too-small green sweater and a Rambo-style green ribbon arouund his head, leapt from the back of the lounge to stand beside Mr. Head-to-Toe. “Who are you?” I asked. “Are you Chris?”
“Yes!” he declared. “I am Chris!” But my spidey-senses were tingling. Something was wrong. Very wrong. “I’m sorry,” I said calmly, “I’m not sure I believe you. Could you please tell me your real name?” “Chris!” he guffawed into the microphone with a much too grinny-grin. Laughter erupted from two tables. “Does anyone know this man?” I asked in desperation, determined to get to the bottom of the fiasco. One table screamed: “yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!” So I went over and asked them: “What’s his name?” They laughed and averted their eyes before responding in suspiciously perfect unison “It’s Chris!” “I don’t believe that.” I stated firmly. “We’ll just have to give him another name.” “Okay, I’m SUPERCHRIS!!!” yelled “Chris”. The crowd went wild and started chanting “SU-PER-CHRIS! SU-PER-CHRIS!”. And that’s why SuperChris won the green category. Don’t worry, Mr. Head-to-toe still got a satisfying $25 for his fashion flare.
Oh, and for those who are still wondering, ”SuperChris’ ” name was not Chris at all. As a matter of fact, it didn’t even begin with a “C”. And as for the too-small sweater, it belonged to a female friend at his table. Go figure.
