To wake up on campus Thanksgiving morning was to wake up in a ghost town, a campus covered in a uniform snow broken only by the distinct footprints of a certain Public Safety officer’s boot. Had Lagu Androga ’07, an RA who remained on campus, been on duty, he would have pushed the total number of RAs on duty between all 156 High, 200 Church, and all of the Butterfields to 2. While maybe not leaving as many footprints, some students remained on campus during the holiday, creating their own celebrations.
“On Wednesday afternoon, there was a Thanksgiving meal for students who stayed around (mostly international students) together with some faculty and staffs,” said Rafael Aussie ’06. “And then on Thanksgiving night we had a potluck dinner at a friend’s house, one of the super-nice prototype housing. There were around twenty-five, people there and we had one huge roast turkey along with some side dishes.”
Aussie remained on campus because he needed to catch up on his schoolwork. Wanting to take advantage of Black Friday, he woke at 4:30 a.m. to go shopping at Clinton Crossing Mall with some friends.
For Androga, Thanksgiving dinner came in a Domino’s “Heatwave” delivery bag. Later in the evening, he went out with some graduate students and ate turkey. He remained on campus because he, like many who stayed during break, is an international student. His home country is Sudan where the only holiday comparable to Thanksgiving is an annual Madí tribal ceremony for his fraternal twin siblings.
“In the past twins rarely survived, so now every year prayers are sung to thank God and to wish them healthy living,” said Androga.
Unlike America’s fourth Thursday of November Thanksgiving, the date of the tribe’s ceremony depends on the village elders who pronounce the day of celebration even when Androga is away from the village, choosing in his absence a long and thin effigial stick to be deeply rooted in the grass and observed exactly as if he were there the entire time.
Athletes were another group of students kept on campus for portions of the break. Basketball player Hannah Stubbs ’06 had practice on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, causing her to celebrate Thanksgiving at a relative’s house nearby, and bringing her back to campus early.
Am Ratanawilaiwan made sleep her first priority.
“My boyfriend asked me, what time do you want me to wake up tomorrow?” Ratanawilaiwan said. “I said, I don’t know, I don’t care. It was a luxury. I had been sleep deprived for the last two weeks, so I slept until 1 or 2. We thought about watching a lot of movies, but I didn’t really bring myself to do it. I just walked around and took naps. You wake up, you don’t really feel like waking up, so you just lie around for awhile. That’s it.”
While this embrace of sleep would have been patent accidie in the eyes of a 6th century monastic, for all of the students on campus I met it can only be called the sine qua non.
“You maybe spend some time with people, and then you just want to relax,” Ratanawilaiwan said. “Sometimes when you are very tired, spending time with people you don’t know is very difficult, and it’s nice to spend time with people for a bit, but then it can be tiring, so we talked for a while after we had our turkey and after that we all just split off, some drank [to inebriation], but some just relaxed.”
Unfortunately, the cost of rest on campus is often a home-cooked meal.
“Cranberry sauce was a disappointment this year,” Stubbs said. “I like the kind that is jelly and when it still looks like the shape of the can with the ridges and everything.”
For nearly all the student body, dining services, the availability of libraries, and the milkman were all missing over the break. Still no one complained of loneliness.
“I was smiling when I forgot about my work,” Ratanawilaiwan said. “But thinking about work and realizing my work, I have a research project next Friday. I thought about starting it but I ended up at the Clinton outlet instead. So I have a few more days to do work.”
Sometimes it takes a vacation to realize how exhausting college is. Some students found the solitude a refreshing, due change.
“Sometimes you just want to sit back and be alone,” Androga said. “And I’ve had a rough semester so I figured this would be a good time to just chill.”
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