"There was a lot of Champagne involved and I wound up with my best friend's date."

Ah, the first-year formal. Young love blooms, and couples swoon. Last Saturday night, a few of the hundreds of couples may have started relationships that will last a lifetime. More probably, by the time this magazine goes to press they will be eagerly awaiting the next Screw Your Roommate dance. And by the time they graduate, they will not even remember their dates' names.

Emil G. Michael '94 says he and his formal date "definitely don't keep in touch. I got the date at 3 am the night before. I wasn't on the ball and all the women were taken, so my friends woke me up the night before and told me they had gotten me a date.

"We didn't get along at all, and the night went horribly. I haven't seen her since then."

Other students had similar experience. One sophomore, who chose to remain anonymous, says her formal was "heinous."

"I drank so much!" she says. The guy I went with was just a friend, but he was interested and I wasn't."

Aperitifs may lead to unexpected results.

"There was a lot of champagne involved and I wound up with my best friend's date," says Eric P. Benoit '95, while the friend in question, Paul C. Kang '95, giggled beside him.

"His date had a party after the formal, and my date had gone home. People started leaving, and eventually my friend moseyed on, leaving me and his date alone," Benoit says.

For some students the formal itself may create as many problems as any Samantha A. Ettus '94 says the formal coincided with her ending relationship.

"My roommates had set me up with this guy for the Screw Your Roommate dance in November of freshman year," she says. "It was a blind date, and we fought the entire night. He didn't even walk me home. I mean, how can you fight with someone you don't even know?

"Somehow, though, we ended up dating, and we went to the formal together. We broke up two days after the formal, but we still talk ocassionally."

Jim D. Ebenhoh '94 says he still keeps in touch with his formal date, but just as friends.

"She was never interested in me in the first place," Ebenhoh said. "She was just being nice."

Some love stories have happy endings, surviving even the first-year formal. "Things went very well, and we've been going out since the week before the formal," sighs one lovestruck junior. Despite this seeming bliss, the man refused to leave his name, so perhaps all is not peaches and cream. "Things are weird right now. Our relationship is very up in the air," he says.

Maybe they'll make it to the senior soiree.