Fervour 2019: Freshers Welcomed?
Written on December 25th, 2019 by {"login"=>"jcbitshyd", "email"=>"journal@hyderabad.bits-pilani.ac.in", "display_name"=>"Journal Club, BPHC", "first_name"=>"", "last_name"=>""}It is the dream of every young adult who enters into a college campus to have a wild fresher’s night; one where the shy kids would burst out of their bubble, where fleeting eyes would lock over a dance floor and where euphoric memories with cliques, crushes, and camaraderie would aid the jump into the “college experience”.
Fervour, BPHC’s event aimed at welcoming the freshers batch to the campus was held on the 18th of August 2019. It was, however, a bit more than a marginal let down.
Fervour did exactly what it should have intended to avoid. It provided a pulpit towards those who were popular on campus towards being loud and disrespectful while alienating and misinforming a large group of freshers who were genuinely interested in living a college life.
It becomes important at this point to dissect the problems at Fervour this year, in an aim to provide a more fulfilling experience towards those arriving into our hallowed halls next August.
Firstly, the entire organization of Fervour was, to put it mildly, as messy as any stereotypical college hostel room floor. A very common complaint that was heard was regarding poor time scheduling. While "BITSians Standard Time" has become its own popular meme around campus, the Organising Committee seemed to have had no qualms over the fact that the event started an hour late and left everyone scrambling to get back to their hostels before their inadequately extended in-time.
On the night of Fervour, the room (F105) was overcrowded with freshers and bored seniors, all sitting or standing together idly surrounded by heat and sweat trying to comprehend the pandemonium at the podium.
While a prom and a DJ night musical show was also organized, most of the students failed to find a partner and ended up dancing in their own groups to very unpopular songs. The DJ was criticized for playing boring songs that did not match the mood of the audience.
The entire idea of the Mr./Miss. Fervour “contest “ was seemingly espoused in the paradigm of beauty pageants; where the motive was not to make any first-year student comfortable with their surroundings – but rather to find out which senior with their undeserved superiority complex deserved to get the biggest kick out of humiliating a young child in front of an audience. All this coupled with the show of objectification, toxic masculinity and down-right bullying masquerading as a “mass-interaction session”, provided the incoming 2019 batch with a very skewed view of life on campus. In this way, Fervour failed at its very purpose.
Let us now divert attention towards the “Talent Show” to decide on Mr./Mrs. Fervour. Here is where the Organizing Committee really came into its stride.
Prior to this round, the “candidates” had been shortlisted on the basis of three previous rounds: an online questionnaire, a blind game, and a so-called on-spot talent round. The online questionnaire included questions that prompted students to think in the most inappropriate way they could. The blind game, which required you to guess your assigned partner on the basis of a list you both made while blindfolded, didn’t have a proper set of rules and the seniors were equally, if not more, confused as the juniors. Once again, this misrepresented sense of superiority showcases that the event was held more for the entertainment of the seniors than for the freshers.
The last qualifier which the organizing committee referred to as the ‘on-spot talent round’ was a means of cheap thrills for the audience as it asked the performers to enact a random dialogue in different accents or moods - namely drunk, high and horny. Students were also made to curse at fellow batchmates or dance to item songs. This fetishization of item songs was worsened on the larger Fervour Night.
Dancing is an empowering activity, however being forced to dance or present the most lewd version of yourself towards a jury of your peers, with disparaging comments being made repeatedly in the background, with waves of unwanted testosterone pungently emanating across the room and being treated not as a person, but objectified as merely as “that form of entertainment” is decisively not only not empowering – but downright disgusting and deplorable.
People act their best when they’re comfortable and happy and able to showcase their individuality. No one is comfortable with a room full of leering creepy eyes objectifying your every move. With each and every Mr./Miss. Fervour “contestant” that walked on stage, the tired metaphor of objectification got stretched to a cliché. It numbed everyone out towards the actual problem and responsibility of the event. While not everyone was forced to dance on stage, those who didn’t were oft-ridiculed or ignored.
All this while, in the background – everyone felt it right to laugh, grin, and guffaw at the self-confidence damaging comments made by seniors on the screen.
Once again, banter is acceptable at times. It helps to lighten the mood of what would have obviously been a very tense crowd. But when you cross a line, inviting people to boo a stand-up comedy sketch off stage or to laugh at a person giving a monologue or to objectify people based on the way they look – you support a culture of being mean just for the sake of it. That is a culture that is so perpetually toxic and soul-crushing, it removes any chance of any constructive personality development.
Speaking of personality development, the glorified beauty pageant/mass interaction session, decided to move its collective attention towards the “Personality Round” of the Mr./Miss. Fervour show.
“Chocolate or Vanilla?”
“Speed or Stamina?”
The point of this nugatory exercise was to see who could come up with the most risqué question that got everyone guffawing like a fifth-grade class when someone drops their first swear word.
It becomes incumbent upon amongst everyone present to call people out for their cruel and derogatory comments. An answer cannot be sheepish smirks or unnecessary braggadocious populism – because these remarks go-ahead to shaping the minds of everyone around you.
We must understand that for a campus culture to change towards anything slightly respectable of future citizens of a country – the culture around campus has to change. Ranging from the not so subtle homophobia to the blatantly misogynistic culture that exists around campus, Fervour has a bigger impact on campus culture than any of us want to accept. While it might not seem like anything larger than a small group of collegiate kids engaging in innocent locker room talk, this first experience that is provided towards freshers acts as a barometer by which they judge the rest of their four or five years on campus. Campus culture is one that should allow for all its stakeholders to have healthier relationships with their peers, empathize with them and develop a sense of understanding of their cultures and the privileges they hold. Fervour, unknowingly, regresses back to an age where those emotions are sidelined. It helps us all sleep well at night, knowing that cushy Fervour was just one of those “forgettable college nights” when the reality is that it teaches a growing group of freshmen/women to learn to be someone they aren’t – because “that is the only way they’ll get through college.”
Common sense, respect, and dignity are not values that are up for compromise and they are definitely not up for compromise for winning Prom King in a college event where you are made to look like a reject from the Backstreet Boys. In this way, there has to be a better way to acclimatize freshers towards college life.
In short, Fervour 2019 was, if anything, a regressive and chaotic show of toxic masculinity shrouded in an enigma of poor organization wrapped up in a dumpster fire of cultural misrepresentation, derogatory and mean stereotypes and a feverishly belligerent level of misunderstood superiority acting as the cherry on top of what was a regrettably unloved sundae.
An opinion editorial by Sanket Bhatt and Mansvi Bhatia, both of 2019 batch.
Edit (27th December, 2019): The Cultural Secretary (Girls), Yasaswi Thota, contacted us with a statement on this article. In an attempt to ensure that the statement can be recorded publicly (for all our readers), we are reproducing it here, verbatim, below (in italics).
A common misconception that we have noticed over the years is that Fervour has been solely associated with the event Mr/Miss Fervour and Fresher’s Night. We wanted to ensure that this time people understood that it is not just a single night, but rather Fervour Week which includes the Workshops and mini competitions conducted by the Clubs and Societies. We wanted everybody to feel like were a part of Fervour.
Now in response to the one-sided article by Mr. Sanket Bhatt and Miss Mansvi Bhatia. A goal that we as the OC had in mind was to get a wider range of participants in Mr/Miss Fervour with an array of skills and talents so we could be as far as possible from being a so called “paradigm of beauty pageants.” The comfort of our contestants was our main priority. I can safely assure you that none of the participants felt that they had “compromised their values of common sense, respect, and dignity for the title” as unjustly mentioned in the article.” Nobody was made to “be someone they weren’t to get through college or achieve popularity in this event.” We told them much beforehand that if they ever felt uncomfortable, they were more than welcome to voice their concerns or stop. We even opened the floor to non contestants to come and showcase their talents, so that they got a chance to be on stage as well. Speaking of “cultural misrepresentation” and “superiority complexes”, which this article claims should be fixed, this article successfully falls into the same boat where a small group of people feel that they are representing the views of the entire campus.
The main aim of Fervour was to welcome the freshmen/women to campus in a light hearted manner and to ease the nerves. Trust me, the wonderful juniors that we met during Fervour Week will be “respectable future citizens.” I strongly urge everybody to not worry about the future of our nation based on a single college event.