Frosh Movie Night
Frosh Movie Night was a tradition formalized by 4E freshmen in the 2000-2001 academic year, primarily the 4E Mafia. Upperclassmen of the day, quick to introduce the freshmen to the ways of punting, showed the frosh various lecture halls with accessible A/V equipment suitable for late-night movie-watching. The frosh took this idea and went with it, taking advantage of what was then a full year of Pass/no record and watching movies quite frequently, and making sure to ask everyone on the hall if they wished to attend. The frequency of these movies caused one hosed upperclassman to sarcastically remark, "Why don't you guys watch a movie every night?"
So, starting then, they did.
Over the course of the year, the Frosh Movie Night group watched over 200 movies, including some very good ones and some very bad ones. It was common to for the frosh to spend a long time poring over the EC Desk movie list, to both the annoyance and amusement of the desk workers--indeed, at one point the movie-watching habits of 4E residents were referenced in an email from EC Moviecomm to the dorm.
Despite the word "Frosh" in the name, FMN outings were in no way limited or exclusive to freshmen; indeed, all were invited and numerous upperclassmen did attend. However, the constraints of upperclassmen being on grades meant that the core group that attended virtually every movie consisted of freshmen, while the rest of the audience varied night by night. During more stressful times of term, the frosh had been known to allow any upperclassman to choose the movie to be watched if they were to come (normally, the movie was chosen by group decision).
Sadly, attempts to continue this tradition in succeeding freshmen classes were unsuccessful. The original 4E Frosh Movie Night group continued to watch a reasonably large number of movies once they were on grades, although not nearly every night, and organized movie nights for special occasions (such as an annual Formal Movie Night to follow Formal Cocoa and a Schwarzenegger marathon after the action star was elected governor of California).
