Yale 'Safety Dance' Decidedly Not Safe, Is Canceled

Every fall, Yale’s Silliman College hosts the Safety Dance, an 80s-themed event named after the Men Without Hats song, not after “safety” as a concept.

Which makes it a tad less ironic that the event, which took place last Saturday, has been canceled because it’s so incredibly unsafe.

The “risk and liability of the Safety Dance are too great for us to continue having it,” two student organizers told the Yale Daily News. Last year, only five students were hospitalized after the event. We say “only” because, this year, eight undergrads had to be taken to the hospital after making bad decisions regarding not only leg warmers and off-the-shoulder sweatshirts but intense alcohol consumption.

The College attempted to make the Safety Dance safer this year by hiring additional security, but to no avail: the Yalies were apparently hellbent on being as unsafe as possible. “Unfortunately, none of the measures we put in place helped to reduce the number of transports or make a dent in the general level of intoxication of those who attended the dance,” Silliman College Master Judith Kraus said. She added that there were “countless incidents inside the dance, most of them unrepeatable, that can be directly attributed to drunkenness.” If the Safety Dance at all resembles the craziest parties on my alma mater’s campus, that definitely means someone had unprotected (read: unsafe) sex, possibly in a fountain.