Reporter's Notebook | Hazing continues to divide Hey Day

Hey Day has historically been the day juniors look forward to the most - but it has also become a tradition surrounded by a heated debate.

The Junior and Senior Class Boards worked together this year to decrease hazing during Hey Day and the Final Toast. However, Hey Day 2009 only proves that the event continues to be a divided one: partly a junior celebration, and partly an excuse for seniors to haze their replacements.

The day started with the junior class picnic on 40th Street Field, where students began to trickle in at about 1 p.m. to pick up the signature Styrofoam skimmer hats and bamboo canes.

Dancing to throwback pop hits and more recent rap, the crowd of juniors swelled as the afternoon wore on.

At the barbecue, students mingled with freshman-year hallmates - a reminder that the next time the entire class would be reunited again would be at graduation.

At 3:30 p.m., however, the herd was let loose and the junior class made its way down Locust Walk.

What started as a semi-stately procession, with chants of "Penn '10" and hoisted canes, soon devolved as the group streamed past the high rises and a set of hazing upperclassmen standing on the Harnwell College House ledge.

Encountering the first showers of modern Hey Day fare - ketchup, flour, barbecue and chocolate sauce and eggs during the procession -- juniors scurried to avoid being easy targets.

Others in the procession, however, embraced the onslaught of condiments. College junior Andy Katz, who was covered himself, hugged the cleaner of his classmates.

"I had stuff thrown on me - it wasn't a big deal," Katz said. "Compared to last year, it was probably a little more toned down. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I could have had more fun."

Wharton junior Michael Geiger agreed with Katz, saying that the hazing did not really detract from the day.

"I ended up being covered in chocolate sauce," he said, noting that most of the people who threw stuff at him were friends. "But I still had a lot of fun."

Whether students were purposely targeted by friends, or simply caught in the cross-fire, few juniors escaped the barrage of condiments.

Further down Locust Walk, students were greeted with even more flour and chocolate sauce, until the outgoing senior class, while barricaded on College Green, toasted the procession not once, but twice.

Before College senior and Class President Brett Perlmutter led the official toasting, many of the seniors along Locust Walk threw their free drinks - part of the $30,000 that went toward Final Toast - at the passing juniors.

So when Penn President Amy Gutmann, Wharton junior and Class President Arthur Smith and Perlmutter faced the scene of juniors, it was a messy one.

The previously all-red sea of juniors at the picnic had transformed into a sticky mess, streaked with ketchup, dusted with flour and doused in beer.

But they were seniors - and that was all that mattered.

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