Yeeeeeaaaaah Buoy! — LSS Boat Party Review

Issue 5, Semester 1, 2019

EDGAR BOX

Boats! Who doesn’t love a good boat? They’re such nifty little craft, useful for all kinds of tasks. Need to pillage some villages a ways up the coast? Boats! Need to colonise some far away lands for King and Country? Boats! Beloved husband of thirty years just die, and now that you’re approaching the twilight years, decide it’s time to rediscover life, love and yourself, in the form of a 30-day sex cruise around the Mediterranean? Boats!

This was obviously the thinking of the LSS committee, who last Wednesday hosted the first annual LSS boat party, ‘Spin Class Heroes’ themed (read: lots of sweatbands and sports bras). The evening began swimmingly. It’s hard to go wrong with $3.00 house vodka, and enough free pizza to trigger all the gluten allergies in Fitzroy. After a while however, the realisation began to sink in, that for all their nautical utility, it turns out that boats do have one drastic shortcoming. In the end they’re only as interesting as whatever you are doing on them.

Set the scene. Two men meet at the end of a pier. One, his feet planted firmly on salt-weathered planks. The other, standing atop the deck of a majestic yacht.

Dave: Hello Greg, say what’s up with the bo-
Greg: Hello Dave! I’m glad you could meet me here today. You see Dave, I have decided to sever my ties to the earthly realm and live out the rest of my days on a boat.
Dave: (blinking hard) … I’m sorry what?
Greg:  Yes Dave, you see on a boat I can do everything I could do on land. Walk. Sit. Consume alcohol. Dance should I choose to do so. The only difference is that I’m just in a much smaller place. And I’m surrounded by water. And I can’t leave when I want to.
Dave: Why would you do that to yourself?
Greg: Boat, Dave. Boat.
Dave: Is the view nice at least?
Greg: Mostly shipping containers and industrial parks, Dave.

Now this is probably a little unfair to the LSS committee. They did, after all, a great job putting together a party that from all appearances a lot of people had a lot of fun at. Drinks were cheap, music was… well music, and even I’ll admit that looking up at the underside of bridges is pretty cool.

Maybe I’m just being salty because I secretly hoped that we’d be boarded by a band of handsome pirates who would whisk me away to play an impromptu game of ‘find the parrot’. But there just seems to be a deeper structural problem with university social events in general. Over the past several years, I’ve come to notice that they always take that same format. Go to location. Drink alcohol. Dance to music. Leave. Now for a lot of us, spending time with friends in a social context is enjoyable, and we don’t need further experience spoon-fed to us. But is it too much to ask to see some variation occasionally? Can we have a social event which does not amount to some variety of drinks and dancing? Are there other kinds of diverse interests and experiences that might be catered to?

I’ve never organised a uni party. I have no idea how difficult it is. However, for what it’s worth here are a few unsolicited ideas for future LSS events:

• Sleepover and pillow fort building in the David Derham Theatre
• LSS open mic/beat poetry night
• Campus-wide game of hide-and-seek chasey

Or whatever floats your… well, you know.

​Edgar is a JD Student and Boat Party Attendee.

Other articles in this issue:

• A Place to Call Home
• What it's like to love you, person who does NOT study law