Frosh is one of the cornerstones of your first year at McGill, or so we’ve been told. Four days of supervised (or unsupervised) fun! Very few schools allow four straight days of school-sponsored drinking! “Frosh is a privilege that we must uphold!”exclaimed one of my Frosh leaders this year. With testimonials like these, expectations were high. However, did Frosh Week(end) live up to them?
The Booze
Expectation: In a massive open-plan bar, pitchers of (free) beer spray down from a number of hands ornamenting the 19th-century twisting staircase as Froshies, with their heads up and their tongues out, consume enough beer to feed a frat for a semester. The floor of the bar is covered in a two-foot layer of a mixture of both alcohol and vomit. By the end of the night, there are so many casualties that residence halls are no more than 50% full and will not recover the entirety of their population until weeks after.
Reality: Frosh is definitely not an alcohol-free event, so quality, quantity and pricing of alcohol is central to many Froshies’ experience. Frosh (at least for the Arts faculty) was priced at over 200 dollars, not including additional alcohol expenses. For many Froshies, buying your own drinks made budgeting a necessity when it came to their drinking. For others, pockets were being emptied so often at so many different places for drinks that were obviously overpriced that from my point of view it seemed like these folks were trying to spend as much money as possible. However, it was definitely possible to get drunk for every event for no more than 100 dollars total.
The actual drinking was not as intense as many anticipated. I personally did not see anyone throw up, although there have been rumours that the Management faculty may not have been the most responsible with their drinking. Froshie Andrew of the Management faculty alluded to something called a “power hour,” although he refused to elaborate on that particular line of questioning. In general, people were consistently a bit drunk, rather than sometimes sober and other times blacking out.
The Frosh Leaders
Expectation:
All Frosh leaders are sober and responsible at all times. Froshies are expected to have fun with respect to their leaders’ crowd control efforts.
Reality: Frosh was more intense than I and many others expected. It is not that the leaders were irresponsible – I want to make it clear that many of them did an amazing job making Frosh what it was, but it was certainly odd to see Mr. “Frosh is a privilege that we must uphold!” lying down hammered on the lawn outside McConnell Engineering Building at 1pm on a Tuesday. From my perspective, for the leaders, Frosh is an excuse to get drunk for a few days (although this obviously is not the case for everyone), which seems fair enough.
Thankfully, the leaders’ enthusiasm did make Frosh more exciting. The dedication these people had to pre-gaming (drinking at one of the leaders’ apartments before going out) at every event was impressive. Letting twenty Froshies drink heavily in your living room is a bold decision. Bold, however, is not strong enough to describe our dear leaders’ exploits. There were pre-games for the boat cruise at 6am. My dad doesn’t even wake up this early. A 6am pre-game means you have to get up at 5am. The respect I have for those who held the events that early is genuinely unmatched.
Making Friends
Expectation: As I walk down the steps of Stewart, I cross the other side of Doctor Penfield Avenue, where I am stopped by two guys who give me a quick little dap up and then continue on past me. I walk for no longer than thirty seconds before I stop and chat with a couple of girls. Telling them I have to leave, I scurry on towards the steps in front of Leacock, high-fiving people sporadically as my trot increases to a scamper. I make a quick right turn and enter the Redpath Library. Looking around the premises as if I were a spy, I dart through the door and down the steps to the marvelous bottom floor where I spot my real friends.
Every single character in this scenario I met at Frosh.
Reality: My personal expectations for Frosh may have been hyperbolic at best. Of course, not every single person in my Frosh group would become my best friend, because in theory you can only have one best friend and groups, by definition, have more than one person. Many Froshies did not make the life-long connections they had anticipated making. It seems as if many of the best friendships were made at more sober camping and climbing Froshes. In fact, my roommate was part of Camping Frosh, and he still hangs out with the people he met almost every day. Most other Frosh programs consisted of events with loud music and drinking, and while that was incredibly fun, it made it harder to have more than a surface level conversation with them. It has only been a week or so (at the time of writing) since Frosh ended, and I do not really know anybody who stayed friends with people from their Frosh group.
Conclusion
Frosh did not meet expectations. For many, it subverted them in a weird, modern art-esque way. Frosh was neither good nor bad; it wasn’t even ugly. The only true statement about Frosh 2025 at McGill University is that it happened.