Blue skies, live music and fried Oreos reigned at this weekend's "Destination Fling."
Spring Fling -- the annual celebration organized by the Social Planning and Events Committee -- took place on Friday and Saturday.
"Overall, Fling was a tremendous success this year," said College senior Andrew Amodeo, director of SPEC's Spring Fling committee.
Festivities were localized largely in the Quadrangle, with Penn bands and student groups performing throughout the day.
"I thought it was ... fun because everyone was at the same place at the same time," College freshman Abby Kolker said. "Also, all my alumni friends [came] back into town for it."
Engineering freshman Neal Behrend thinks that his first Fling "will be one of my most memorable experiences in college."
"It was amazing," he said. "I was sitting in the middle of the Quad with four other friends, listening to good music and just watching the insanity happen."
Kolker agreed that the best part of Fling was "just hanging out in the Quad and seeing everyone."
As in recent years, the festivities were marked by heavy drinking among students across campus, though many events were technically alcohol free.
This year, Fling organizers implemented a program called Team Sober -- for which a group of student alcohol monitors worked to ensure the safety of their peers by being visibly sober in the Quad.
He described this decision as "Penn's attempt to curb the alcohol culture that surrounds Fling."
Amodeo said that Fling was the result of "about four months of planning."
"The organization just comes from a lot of advanced planning," he said. "It runs smoothly because we pay a lot of attention to security -- we try to make it as safe an environment as we possibly can."
In addition to the activities in the Quad, a sparsely-attended concert was held on Friday night in Wynn Commons, and there was a carnival Saturday night in Wynn Commons and on College Green.
Behrend did not find the carnival as exciting as the rest of Fling. Despite this, he described the weekend as "an incredible first experience."
In the end, the traditional formula worked.
"We didn't change much" from last year, Amodeo said. "We just let people enjoy what they've come to know as Fling."
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