Perspective: Spring Fling

Penn's spring party was started back in 1973 by three guys with a guitar and a Woodstock state of mind. The year was 1973. Three boys sat in a Quad dorm room, one singing a folk song while his friend accompanied him on guitar. As the music drifted out into the hallway, they talked about school and the upcoming end of the semester. An idea slowly grew between them as they were talking -- it was an idea for a festival, a celebration of music, culture and art. And together, on that February evening, the three Penn undergraduates came up with the idea for the first Spring Fling. "We were all pretty romantic in those days," said the guitar player, 1974 College alumnus Craig Salvay. "We were lamenting the tradition of Skimmer, it just didn't jive with what was going on in the early '70s -- the Vietnam War, the last of the Beatles." The students wanted to throw a party that would unite the entire school for one weekend with music, dance, food and thousands of students enjoying the sunshine. They chose an emblem for that first Fling -- the well-recognized painting by Matisse entitled "La Danse" depicting a ring of women dancing. The three men -- Salvay and 1974 Wharton graduates Robert Haft and David Dibo -- felt the painting captured the spirit they hoped Fling would embody. Little did these three students know that under their initiative, Penn had embarked on what would become a 27-year-old tradition, a veritable rite of the coming of a new season and an interlude before the lurking final exam period. They founded an event complete with headlining bands, free-flowing drink and thousands of students packed into the Quadrangle. "No one knew we were creating a tradition," Salvay said. "We were just having a good time." Come Together Though officially born in the 1970s, Spring Fling actually served as replacement for the tradition of Skimmer -- an event, dating as far back as Prohibition, when students cheered crew races on the Schuylkill River. But with a longtime reputation for rowdiness, Skimmer was banned by both Penn and the City of Philadelphia in 1972 for repeated misconduct. So when the student organizers discussed their vision for a new springtime event, they planned to steer away from the historically troubled Skimmer and instead introduce a festival that would better reflect the free-wheeling ideology of the era. The hair was long, the clothes tie-dyed and typical after-graduation plans included dropping out of society and living on a commune, according to Haft. "The social mores of the early and mid-'60s had given way to a total lack of social mores," Salvay explained. "There was an idealism that pervaded our lives then." Starting from scratch, the three students single-handedly organized the two-day party in the Quad that would entertain thousands of people. To make the party happen, they had to build a stage and solicit musical acts and local artists to perform on it; they had to recruit the 25 vendors to feed the masses; they had to build facilities for creative artists to display their handiwork. And when it was all over, they had to clean up. According to the three men, although they divided the approximately $800 expenses with Penn, they did all the grunt work themselves. They began planning and organizing in mid-March for the festival in late April. "It was totally free from University supervision," Haft said. "If there was any supervision, it was mine." And the men admitted that up until the final hour, they were far from sure that they would be able to pull it off. "There was this excitement of 'Is this going to work, what would happen if it didn't work?'" Haft said. Still, they persevered to put it all together. The men erected a makeshift stage and wired the Quad for sound and electricity. Salvay remembers hot-wiring the speaker system from a basement laundry room while standing in a puddle. He would have been electrocuted but for his rubber-soled tennis shoes. And they built the stage themselves with lumber from a local hardware store. "I remember carting sheets of plywood on my back from 40th and Market," Salvay said. The organizers also arranged for all the services, convincing downtown restaurants to sell food and soliciting local entertainment acts. "All the restaurants that could never get on campus rented space from us," Haft said, noting that the 25 vendors offered food ranging the gamut from Chinese to Italian. A campus institution at the time, "Al the Fruit Man" was one of the food vendors invited to the first Fling. He sold fruit out of the back of his aging Chevy station wagon parked beside the Quad. To get entertainment, the students called upon Philadelphia thespians as well as campus performers. "My roommate was an actor," Haft noted. "And he knew a lot of artists." Here Comes the Sun With all the preparations out of the way, the Fling weekend -- April 19, 20 and 21 -- rolled around. Each day students filled the Quad, listening to music, dancing on the Quad lawn and basking in the sunshine surrounded by blooming gingko trees and wisteria. "From Thursday night until Sunday we took over the campus," Haft recalled. "For a couple of days, you could suspend belief and see what the future might be like." Although many aspects of Fling remain the same, the men noted that social attitudes during that weekend were very typical of the 1970s. In fact, they compared the crowd to the attendees at Woodstock. "It was the era of sex and drugs and a very open era," Haft said. To open up the musical portion of Fling '73, Salvay played a personal composition on his guitar. "I was the first musician to play at the first Spring Fling," he boasted. The first few lines of his song still remain permanently in his memory, "Rise, see the new day begin," words that he believes embody the idealistic spirit that accompanied the creation of Fling. Haft recalls the improvised nature of the first Fling's musical acts. "We had doctors from HUP playing the harmonica," he said. Another of the original Fling traditions has faded into memory. In 1973, the organizers had difficulty attracting a star entertainer, instead ending up with a star square-dance caller. "People hadn't square-danced in 15 years," Haft said. "But we found a fantastic caller, and the whole Quad was rocking." With a 12-watt amplifier and an old-time guitar, the caller looked like he had come "straight out of West Texas," Salvay said. Thirty years later, Fling attendees take a more conservative approach to partying than their parents' generation, but much of the festival has withstood the test of time. The high point of Fling is still dancing to the tunes of a big-name musician. From the Psychedelic Furs in 1983 to Cypress Hill in 1994, the musical act has always reflected the varied preferences of the student body. And throughout the two days in the Quad, local musicians, student bands and a cappella groups entertain the crowds. One on-campus group has remained constant in their participation in Fling. Mask and Wig has closed many Saturday performances with their combination of musical satire and comedic play. "We close the show in Lower Quad on Saturday evening," said College senior Josh Slatko, chairman of Mask and Wig. "It's been going on as long as I have been around, and I am sure much longer than that." And the Beat Goes On Though the names of headlining bands and some of the activities have changed, the intent of Fling has remained constant, according to this year's Fling co-chairman Jason Ebert, a College junior. "People still get absolutely hammered and party like crazy," he said. "It is towards the end of the semester, the weather is getting nicer and everyone is in a party mode," Ebert added, echoing his 1973 counterparts. Lisa Malbacho, a Nursing senior and co-chairwoman of this year's Fling, came to her first celebration as a visiting pre-freshman. "We went to the outdoor Violent Femmes concert," she said. "There is something special about the outdoor element." One of the men who started it all returned to campus last year to see how Penn students today have continued his legacy. Salvay said the spirit of Spring Fling has not diminished over the years. "It is the celebration of humanity," he said.