James Larson

On top of their thesis scrambles and classwork, some seniors sported perfect attendance for another daily obligation this February.

The Feb Club — a social organization for seniors — named 79 members of the class of 2020 as All-Stars, which means that they attended every night’s pop-up party, with one absence permitted. Put together annually by members of Desmos Society, the club wrapped up a month of partying on Saturday, Feb. 29.

“I’m trying to live my senior year to the fullest and spend quality time with people. Feb Club was a really nice way to see people in my senior class,” Valentina Connell ’20 said.

Feb Club, a Yale tradition dating back to the 1970s, organizes parties for seniors in their last semester. This year, venues ranged from St. Anthony Hall to the Yale Center for British Art. All seniors are invited to partake in the festivities. At the start of the semester, the Senior Class Council sent out a link to all seniors, prompting them to subscribe to the Feb Club email panlist.

Seniors interested in joining Feb Club for the month paid $29 — $1 per every party to the club hosts — before Jan. 15 and $36 after that and until Feb. 1. Other students who knew they would likely not attend a significant number of parties could pay a door price of $5 or $10, depending on the venue. Other seniors chose to participate in Feb Club by volunteering their apartments or suites for a night.

Three seniors in Desmos, Yani Fabre ’20, Sue Hong ’20 and Jordan Lampo ’20, organized the tradition this year.

“We began planning more seriously in early November and had a rough calendar of events finalized by the final week of January,” wrote the Desmos delegation in an emailed statement to the News.

While Desmos has planned Feb Club for the past several years, unaffiliated student volunteers used to organize the program. In the late ’80s and ’90s, the parties were largely sponsored by Delta Kappa Epsilon.

Desmos reimbursed individual party hosts up to $200 for parties held Sunday to Wednesday and up to $300 for parties on Thursday to Saturday, due to higher attendance on weekends.

Parties included bouncers, bartenders and at least one designated sober monitor, whose name and contact information was shared every day. The organizers explained that they gave preference to bartenders with a Training and Intervention Procedures (TIPS) alcohol training certification, and most of the hired bouncers double as Community Consent Educators. The daily email also included guidelines and expectations for all events, such as a statement regarding zero tolerance of sexual misconduct.

For attending all events, all-stars received their prize — a commemorative flask. They were given one skip over the month, and were granted another if they volunteered at a Feb Club-sanctioned community service event. This year’s volunteer opportunities included shifts at soup kitchens and a Know Your Numbers health screening.

“Thinking of the All-Star challenge as a competition or game definitely appealed to my competitive side,” wrote Tarek Ziad ’20 in an email to the News. “It was a great way to see fellow seniors’ faces that I hadn’t seen in a while and re-bond over our mutual quests to All-Starhood.”

Connell, a Feb Club all-star, is also an organizer for the Alternative Senior Class Gift, which has selected four local New Haven nonprofits this year. According to Connell, Feb Club co-hosted a party on Feb. 21 with Alternative Class Gift organizers, encouraging students to donate to the senior gift.

Vishal Patel ’20, said that while he managed to earn all-star status, some students struggled to attend all parties due to unanticipated schedule conflicts. According to Patel, on Feb. 22, several prospective All-Stars, who were expecting to attend an evening event, were unable to accommodate schedules for a day party which took place instead. Still, Patel was “glad” to have participated and built a “close community” within the cohort of All-Stars.

The undergraduate Feb Club also has an alumni counterpart: Feb Club Emeritus, founded in 2008 by a group of Yale alumni reminiscing about the senior tradition. It also organizes nightly parties in the month of February for Yalies and their friends all over the world. Its affiliated Facebook group, “Feb Club for Old People,” boasts nearly 3,000 members. Although cities in the US made up a majority of the venues this year, Feb Club also sponsored events spanning from Delhi to Zurich.

“Feb Club was an enormous task to organize,” the Desmos organizers said. “It is a special senior tradition, and we’re glad to have been a part of, and that we hope continues to be handled in a way that promotes safety, inclusion and fun for the senior class.”

Desmos was revived in 2010, after having been inactive since 1967.

Emily Tian | emily.tian@yale.edu

Correction, March 4: A previous version of this article stated that “unaffiliated student volunteers used to its organizer the program.” The article has been updated to correct this typo.