It’s springtime in Oxford – really, almost summer – and ‘tis the season for college balls. When I first arrived at my college, I’d never heard of such a thing. At American high schools, there are numerous dances and opportunities for celebration. There’s prom of course, but also spring flings and ring dances (where you receive your class ring) and entire weekends devoted to homecoming. A similar pattern repeats at university, although in exchange for prom there are often formals; really, they’re all dances with varying degrees of dress, from black to white tie.
The dress code is similar for many balls in Oxford. But as I heard in the course of my first term, tales from our college’s Quincentanary Ball still circulating months later and even forming the backbone of the Christmas Pantomime, there’s much more to them as well. Carnival rides, laser tag, cotton candy and popcorn and even the Mission on wheels – nothing like what you’d expect. And so I anxiously awaited Trinity of my first year, when my friends and I went off to our first college ball. My own college has one every other year, so we had to wait until a couple of weeks ago for that. Each was enjoyable in its own right – and each brought with it a trove of new terminology for my American tongue to prattle on about.
Apparently, bumper cars are dodgems. Cotton candy – it’s candy floss. Smarties aren’t small sweet-and-sour tablets, they’re chocolate. Laser tag is still rather like a game of tag, but here in Britain, it’s a quest too. There are silent discos alongside regular DJs and travelling magicians, just far enough away from our childhoods to seem amusing again. What’s more, in America hog roasts are practically historical relics; here in Oxford it seems that they’re alive and well. And the list of anomalies goes on.
No matter the theme, whether it be the ancient world or the medieval era, the height of Georgian England or the Jazz Age, or even reminiscent of a land not of this earth, college balls are one of the highlights of a summer term in Oxford. As groups of friends stumble home, high heels beginning to ache as the champagne buzz wears off, the sun rising over the dreaming spires of the city in the pre-dawn hours, they do so having just created some of the best memories of university they will have.
