Spring 2010 Drag Ball Canceled

Organizers and College staff have canceled this year's Drag Ball, the popular event that for years has taken place shortly after spring break. This year, students will have to do without the traditional heavily made-up, extravagantly-costumed night described as Oberlin's prom.

The Ball cancellation was due to inadequate student participation in the planning and coordination and the large amount of support the event would require from staff outside the organizing committee.

Explaining the extensive effort that has gone into supporting past Drag Balls, Dean of Students Linda Gates said that the event "stretches systems that are already stretched as tight as they can stretch."

She also commented on the lack of time and human resources available for Drag Ball, saying that with the traditional date for Drag Ball only a month away and with one student on the committee, "there isn't time to plan it."

Although the 'Sco will still hold an event with performers on the same night Drag Ball would have been held, Gates said, "There won't be Drag Ball as we've known it."

Staffing Problems

At Drag Ball's inception in 1990, responsibilities for organizing the event fell equally on the Student Union, the Multicultural Resource Center and what was then called the Lesbian Gay Bisexual community. However, in recent years, that cooperation has fallen off.

Associate Director of the Student Union Chris Baymiller, OC '71, said that in the event's early days, the responsibility was "pretty much equal because we all needed one another to pull it off."

"But," he said, "for the last eight years ... it [was] cold reality that it was the committee of one, it was the committee of two, and that's really what's been putting Drag Ball on -- one person, two people -- but then needing the logistical support of half the College." Baymiller concluded, "It was an untenable situation that just didn't work."

That committee of one was, this year, composed of College senior Sarah Chase. Said Chase, "I started last year with a committee of probably 11, 12, had meetings last fall. ... As time wore on, less and less e-mails would come back from the e-mail list I was sending out, and by the time it got to hiring performers [in December and January], I just hired them myself."

The lack of student involvement in planning and organizing the event contributed to strain on College employees. According to Baymiller, in previous years, it has been a condition of employment for Student Union's employees that they work six hours at Drag Ball. Baymiller added that staff from across campus have been involved in constructing sets and providing security for the event.

The Drag Ball committee has also operated for years, according to Baymiller, with little institutional memory and no manual of operation to pass on to future organizers. Said Baymiller, "I've literally disseminated this stuff countless times to no avail."

Additionally, though Chase is currently working to make the committee a chartered organization, in the past, it has operated as an ad-hoc group.

Recent Drag Balls have also seen less coordinated involvement from the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender community. Said Baymiller, "It was very crucial in the early years to have the LGBT coordinator from the MRC ... and then we always had a large group from the LGBT community, and they were basically sort of driving the engine for that and we were providing logistical support, and for whatever reason, that sort of collapsed."

However, Baymiller, Gates and Chase agreed that the LGBT community is not to blame for Drag Ball's lack of organization and subsequent cancellation. "The people who have coordinated it in the past years ... are people who are members of the LGBTQ community, but they maybe aren't having an interface between the MRC," said Chase, who added, "It's not like the event hasn't been cared for by queers."

The problem in Drag Ball's planning has largely lain in the lack of an adequate number of students on the committee, according to Gates, who said, "I think that with ... more student organizers something will happen next year that's not happening this year. The key to it is to have the number of student organizers it takes to organize an event."

Baymiller echoed these sentiments, saying, "We have one student here. It's not fair to expect one student to pull something off like this when it's not a Student Union event [and] it's not a ResEd event. It's supposed to be a student-run event ... and it hasn't been for a very long time."

Dysfunctional Structure

Though the committee produced Drag Balls for several years despite a lack of organization, administrators said that the process of planning Drag Ball ultimately could not continue in the same manner, as Drag Ball began to harm future events during its planning in what Shozo Kawaguchi, associate dean of community life, described as a "dysfunctional structure."

Chase said of the increasing difficulty of creating Drag Ball, "One of the things that got me really worried as this process went on was that Drag Ball was being destructive to itself. ... Because I was just trying to do Drag Ball and make an event happen for another year, I wasn't able to spend time working on a budget that might go in for next year, and make sure that the charter goes through."

She added that during this planning, she "felt irresponsible because I knew that next year that there was no way that Drag Ball would happen. ... Drag Ball was going too far with itself."

Kawaguchi indicated that Drag Ball might have reached its natural end in its previous form, saying, "It's a good point at which we really needed to evaluate the current form of Drag Ball."

Money Matters

Though the cost of Drag Ball has been a common topic of discussion, as the event has cost $35,000-$40,000 in recent years, the availability of funding wasn't an issue in the cancellation of this year's Drag Ball.

The Student Finance Committee has traditionally been a large source of funding for Drag Ball. SFC has contributed $10,000-$11,000 to Drag Ball each of the past two years and was willing to continue its support this year. Sandhya Raman, College senior and committee coordinator of SFC, said of SFC, "We would have been ready to look at their budget and fund."

Chase confirmed the lack of financial difficulties. She said, "I was pretty confident that I would be able to get money from the SFC and from different program groups ... because of Drag Ball's tradition, its legacy and its powerful place on campus." Chase added that admission for Drag Ball usually earns the Committee about $20,000, and that she was trying to cut costs in other ways, for example, by bringing in performers who were already on tour to cut down on transportation costs.

The Show Must Go On

Later this semester, there will still be a drag show at the 'Sco, but Chase stressed that though drag performers are still coming to Oberlin, the night will not be Oberlin's traditional Drag Ball.

"There will not be any runway competition, there will not be any student performances, per se, there won't be the normal judging that would go on at a Drag Ball," said Baymiller.

"It's a different event altogether," Chase said. "As far as I see, Drag Ball is canceled, and there's an event that's run by a different organization that's happening in the 'Sco that happens to have the performers who were going to come to Drag Ball do a different kind of schtick in a different venue."

The difference in the event shouldn't discourage students from expressing themselves, though. Said Gates, "People can dress in drag any time they want." The cancellation of this year's Drag Ball doesn't mean, however, that it can't return in the future.

"It may come back as a new tradition, it may evolve into a different tradition," said Gates. "If there is ... enough student interest to create a good, viable, sustainable program for next year, I am all for it," Gates said. "I just want it to be generated by students and not to be propped up ... or generated and executed by such an enormous number of staff people."

"Drag Ball is fabulous, it's amazing, it's huge," added Chase. "I think that if people want it ... we can work, we can make it happen ... but not this year."