Pachanga, a popular dance hosted by the International Club, will now be held annually instead of semesterly, according to an e-mail to the Justice from Director of the Intercultural Center Monique Gnanaratnam. Associate Dean of Student Life Jamele Adams said in an interview with the Justice that Pachanga will next be held in spring 2012; it will not take place this semester, and it will be held each spring starting next year.

When asked why the event was made an annual event instead of a semiannual one, Adams said, "We don't want to run the risk of having a duplication of the negative things that surround the event happening."

He said that it will be held in the spring because "the hope is that by the time an event of the magnitude of Pachanga comes around, folks, particularly our newest members of the Brandeis family, our first-years, would have had time to already [be] exposed to all [kinds] of these things before this huge event that, for all intents and purposes, has become an event that folks heard about being something social, something that involves drinking."

Adams said that the Office of the Dean of Student Life and the I-Club collaborated in deciding that the dance should take place annually. According to Can Nahum '12, I-Club President, "[The I-Club executive board] had a bunch of meetings with both [Adams and Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Student Life Rick Sawyer] and Monique [Gnanaratnam], and we did say whatever we wanted to say, but . when the administration doesn't want to take any risks on a particular event, then there's not much to do. . What ended up happening was we accepted what they were saying. They had pretty good reasons."

Sawyer referred requests for comment to Gnanaratnam; she did not respond to requests for further comment before press time.

In an October 2010 interview with the Justice, Director of Public Safety Ed Callahan said that approximately 20 students required medical attention and two students were arrested on Oct. 23, 2010, the night of the most recent Pachanga event.

"[Pachanga] has been marketed ... by folks in the community as the one time where everybody goes and gets very inebriated. The hope is that by the time that it comes around in the spring, ... that won't be the mantra," Adams said.

Nahum said, "We wanted to ... have another Pachanga this semester as we do every semester; however, it is kind of a tricky subject, because when you look at it from administration's point of view, it's not very easy to let an organization continue to create an event which may potentially have some risks toward the community itself."

According to Nahum, I-Club proposed "[working] with certain organizations on campus to create a campaign against over-intoxication [and about] drinking responsibly" and finding a system of selling tickets that would make counterfeiting tickets more difficult so that Pachanga could take place this semester.

However, he said, "from the administration's point of view, [Pachanga] still has a lot of risks to it, and they believe there is no more room for error. ... They wanted us to come up with something else, another event, one where the International Club can actually celebrate ... more cultures and diversity."

Nahum said that I-Club had already booked the Levin Ballroom for March 5 in anticipation of holding Pachanga on that date.

Now that the dance will not take place, Nahum said, the club is planning another event. He said that the Custom Clothing Club and Colleges Against Cancer will co-sponsor an event and he hopes other cultural clubs on campus will also participate.

"We talked to a lot of people about [Pachanga] and what we hear from the administration and our peers is that what the ICC and International Club did that night was not wrong. We played it by the book. We always do everything to the best of our abilities. But when you have 850 people intoxicated, some of [whom are] ... very angry, it gets very hard to put up with that," Nahum said.


-Fiona Lockyer contributed reporting.