Melany Perez
Yale is a mysterious place. From whispers of society parties to screams from the Bass Naked Run, there always seems to be some campus tradition that’s equal parts confusing and intriguing.
Hi! My name is Eliza, and I’m a sophomore in Pierson College studying comparative literature. I’m one of many Yale students with puzzling backgrounds. I’m trained as a butcher, and I love tofu. I’m Jewish, and my mom’s last name is Church. I’m American, and I went to an international school for 10 years. I quote Proust just as much as I quote Season 8 of Love Island.
I know all too well that there’s a lot more to people, places and things than meets the eye. And that’s why I love Yale. You can never fully understand everything going on here, but you can try! And that’s what Enigma, this column, is all about — digging deeper into these pressing questions and providing much needed answers.
If you only had one word to describe all of the Yale student body, what would it be? Hm. This is a question that nobody asked me, but I’m still going to give my answer anyway: committed.
We commit ourselves to crafting an insightful discussion point in our Henry James seminar, to setting distance running records in track & field, to conducting cutting edge research on climate change. But what about other kinds of commitments that are less publicized, but equally celebrated?
Our mystery begins to unfold at 300 York St., a.k.a Toad’s Place. According to its website, the concert hall has been “hopping” since 1975. For 50 years, many notable touring acts have rocked their stage, including David Bowie, Declan McKenna, Drake Bell of Nickelodeon’s “Drake & Josh” and also Drake, the rapper. And those are just the ones that start with the letter “D”.
Aside from live music, Toad’s also specializes in what they self-describe as “college dance parties.” Toad’s hosts these Yale-only nights every Wednesday. It’s free for students over 21 and typically five bucks for the unfortunately underage.
If you’re asking around about people’s midweek social plans, Wednesday Night Yale Dance Party at Toad’s Place is kind of a mouthful. Instead, we coined the perfect portmanteau: “Woads,” which has stuck ever since its first recorded use in a September 2013 issue of the Yale Daily News.
The inaugural Woads, held during the first week of fall semester, is always filled to the brim. On the sweat slicked dance floor, expect to find overeager first years looking for trouble on the tails of Camp Yale revelry. They, and the upperclassmen present, will be relishing in the lackadaisical character of syllabus week.
Unlike the blissfully unaware first timers, Toad’s Place veterans know that a homework-free weekday is a rarity. Truly once in a blue moon. As more Wednesdays pass, the throbbing crowd tends to taper. You start hearing a chorus of explanations like “I have a PSET due” or “I have the Yague” or “It’s a Wednesday?!” — or just a simple “No thanks. Maybe next week?”
But not every Yalie can think in terms of a “next week.” There is a small, but committed cohort who attend every Woads of the academic year, sleep schedule and deadlines be damned. Instead of, say, pledging Greek life in the Spring, these zealous few sacrifice all of their Wednesday evenings to the deities of Toad’s Place. Every week, they attend the academy of penny drinks, where they study under the greats, mainly Dua Lipa and Bad Bunny.
Legend has it that they don’t just bleed Yale Blue, they bleed Toad’s green too. You might think to call them something as simple as luminary, genius or hero, because sure, they are all those things (and more). We call them Woads Scholars. And if you were thinking, “Hey! Doesn’t that rhyme with the oldest graduate scholarship in the world?” — well, let’s call that a happy coincidence.
But who are these dance floor savants? Are they just a campus myth? That’s what I’m focusing on in this week’s column of Enigma. I’m probing the ever important question of whether Woads scholars actually exist.
The most logical place to start would, of course, be going to Woads. But not just any old Woads. Midterm season posed ideal circumstances to observe a naturally whittled down crowd. If someone claims they go every week, then they have to be in attendance.
Wednesday evening rolled around, and I started prepping for my investigation. Armed with questions on my Notes app and a pocket-sized recording device, I walked in a straight line from my dorm in Pierson until I reached the iconic green awning and joined the meager line.
After cashing in $10, my friend Linden and I found a table in a covert location and got to work. We spotted Jacob Kao ’25, and when I asked why he was Woads-ing, he told me, “I just turned 21 yesterday, so I’m just here for penny drinks and the vibes.” But even though he was celebrating a major milestone, he wasn’t a Woads scholar, so we went back to the drawing board.
I started to think, where would the elusive Woads scholars even be hiding? Then, it dawned on me that I was asking the wrong question entirely. They wouldn’t be hiding at all! I had to hit the dance floor — for research purposes, of course — to scout for any potential scholars.
I approached Kenan Collignon ’24 to the beat of “Lean On” by DJ Snake and Major Lazer, and I asked him the crucial question: “Are you a Woads scholar?” To which he said, “So far, yes. But I was a full year Woads scholar in the 2021-2022 year.”
We’ve got a live one, boys! I asked Kenan to share his favorite Woads memory. Because, if he spent every Wednesday of his sophomore year at Toad’s, he must have notable stories to show for it. “I was with a friend one time when he got kicked out of Woads,” he told me. Basically, Kenan’s friend brought in outside alcohol that a bouncer attempted to confiscate.
When the friend didn’t cooperate, Kenan recalled, “the [security] dude, like, grabbed him and shoved him up against the wall and then threw him out, so that was kinda funny.”
If that seems excessively violent, it might be because the anecdote is missing a key fact: “My friend lowkey slapped the dude in the face a little bit, not hard, but it was not what you should do to a bouncer, for sure.”
I finished off our conversation by asking Kenan how he was able to balance the chaos of a weekly trip to Toad’s with his schoolwork as a computer science major, and he looked at me earnestly. “You just make time. If it’s a priority, you find the time, y’know?”
When I asked him if he knew any other Woads scholars, he nodded. I wasn’t surprised, especially since they all basically attend an unofficial club meet up once a week. Club like extracurricular, but also club like oontz oontz. He pointed to someone in the crowd, who from a distance, looked like a fast-dancing blur in some kind of hat.
Intrigued, I cotton-eye-joe’d my way past the polo team, none of whom were in any state to comment due to the seriousness of initiation tasks. I approached the mysterious figure, and he playfully tipped his cowboy hat in my direction.
Ravi Balasubramanian ’24 is recognized around campus for his distinctly Western look, which he told me serves as the ideal icebreaker, and more pertinently, his esteemed Woads scholar status. What motivated him to pursue this achievement? He tapped his pointed leather boot and gave me the short answer: “I just wanted to have fun.”
And then, the longer one: “I mean, I came in 2020, so [my] first year was COVID, [my] second year was COVID. I only get two real years of college, so I was like, eh. Why not? And yeah, I just did it!” He attended with astonishing consistency, becoming so well-known to the bouncers that they stopped checking his ID.
“Last year, during the last Woads, I’m just minding my own business, I’m just dancing, and someone came up [to me].” When the employee said the manager wanted to meet Ravi, he was suspicious; he thought he must be in big trouble. “I went to the office, and they gave me free stuff, and they made me the Woads Scholar.” If you search for Woads Scholar on Fizz, the first result is Ravi smiling from ear-to-ear in a Toad’s hoodie.
You might ask, what kind of major would the unofficial representative of Woads be pursuing? “I’m doubling in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and Comparative Literature.” I knew better than to be surprised. Ravi is an enigma personified, a Yale student actually succeeding at the typically aspirational work hard, play hard lifestyle.
Ravi showed me that Woads and academic achievement can exist simultaneously. “I come here to think, to clear my head. The good energy gets my gears turning. Sometimes I’ll spend an hour here, then go write an essay.” And this isn’t the only instance he remembers Yale students using Woad’s as part of an unconventional study process.
Once, he was dancing at Woads with some friends, “then suddenly, a massive circle appeared behind us, and we had no idea what was going on. Turns out someone brought in their computer as a joke, sat down on the floor with a group of friends, and they all started working on a computer science problem set together,” Ravi said. A true only-at-Yale moment.
I finished off the interview by asking him this crucial question: What does he have to say to Yalies who have never spent a Wednesday at Toad’s Place? “If you’ve never been to Woads before, it can be intimidating,” he remarked. “Just see what it’s like. And if you don’t want to come back, that’s fine. But you might find you have a good time, you might make friends, see your old friends as well. And it’s a good place to blow off steam. Come and try it once.”
I felt exalted after cracking the case. Woads scholars do exist! And not only are they extremely kind, they’re some of the most committed members of the Yale community.
To celebrate our findings, I pocketed my recording device, and Linden and I decided to enjoy the end of our evening with Ravi and Keenan. We lip synced along to “Love You Like A Love Song” by Selena Gomez & The Scene and tore up the dance floor to “On the Floor” by Jennifer Lopez ft. Pitbull. For the first time in a long time, I felt truly free. It felt like the night was never going to end.
And then, they cut the music. At 11:45 p.m., I found this overly dramatic voice note I’d recorded that said, verbatim, “Oh my god. This is a travesty. I think that this is a horrible, horrible end to my night.” Ravi consoled me, “Yeah, it is a shame. Usually they close around 1. This was a travesty. But hey! There’s always next week.”