Progressive

From CarlWiki

This article is about a type of party. There is also a publication called The Carleton Progressive.

A Progressive is a party that takes place in multiple rooms or locations on or off campus. A different food and/or drink, usually but not always alcoholic, is served at each location. When a party has "run its course" at one location, someone yells "Pro-gress!" At this point, everyone moves to the next location.

There are many advantages to hosting a progressive over a normal, same-location party. First off, hosting duties are spread over a large number of people. This allows students who may never usually host a large gathering to show off their room to a large number of poeple without worring about keeping them entertained for a long time. Secondly, since each host provides a small comestable, costs are spread out rather than being shouldered by one person/persons. Thirdly, since each host wants to differentiate themselves, many of the locations offer different and sometimes exotic items, giving guests a chance to sample several different foods or drinks rather than the same fare for the entire evening.

Progressives are highly frowned upon by Res Life for several reasons. Ususlly, they tend to be very alcohol-centered, with every room's contribution being a drink of some kind. As such, students, espically underaged students, can have easy access to alcohol without a single "host" that the administration can hold accountable. Registration forms for parties with multiple hosts and locations are usually rejected, and multiple forms from each individual host are also rejected if they are in proximity of other parties, thus leading to many unregistered floor progressives.

Many of the drinks tend to be hard alcohol based. This is due to several reasons. Since every room tries to be different, most forgo the common "keg" beer for more exotic mixed drinks. Secondly, when several underaged students act as hosts, it often makes it easier on a "legal" student to purchase several bottles of hard alcohol for multiple hosts. However, since many younger students are inexperienced in drinking hard alcohol, there is a greater tendancy to get overly drunk at a progressive than at a standard "kegger".

As they are "traveling" parties, students not wishing to take part can often get stuck in the middle as the crowd drifts from one location to the next. Also, as they are often held in dorm rooms too small to hold the number of guests, the party often circulates into the hall outside the host room. While annoying to those around them, they do have a tendancy to get over quickly and break up into smaller, quieter parties at the end, going back to "finish off" at any popular rooms. Yet again, the last location on a progressive is sometimes a "blow off" room with dance music or other entertainment, making it more like a standard party.

A Regressive is a special type of progressive held by students at the end of their senior year. The hosts of the regressive are students who lived on the same floor their freshmen year. This makes the locations of the party very diverse, depending on where the students drifted. Also, this can help reunite students who may have drifted apart during the three years since they lived together.