We are being primed for the games.
Founder’s Day is an opportunity for every student on Vassar’s campus to dress up, party, sleep, wake up, party more, nap, and party again. It’s a weekend discussed and anticipated throughout the academic year. In turn, the immediately succeeding trials of the academic year (finals) become, to students, life-threatening. Sound familiar?
Sunrise on the Reaping is set to premiere November 20th, 2026. In light of this, it’s time to wake up to the truth about Vassar’s much-loved Founder’s Day: it is the equivalent of the Capitol’s celebrations, the same ones that prepare tributes for the Hunger Games. All nine houses fight for their lives in the week and a half of finals following these indulgent celebrations, dedicated to the very figure who set this cyclical system up. By recognizing the parallels between Panem’s annual Hunger Games cycle and Vassar’s own Spring Academic calendar, the call to action cannot be ignored.
Similarly to how the train to the Capitol is stocked with all the food one can imagine, our Founder’s Day lures students with the promise of indulgence. Every student (tribute) dresses to the nines to present themselves as a player on the map at a party that will drain their energy to the brink before the most important trials of the academic year. Vassar students’ preceding group trips to the Poughkeepsie Galleria and the thrift are made with vicious intent before their costumes can be edited to perfection within dorm walls. Wearing the costumes they’ve planned for months, Vassar students will experience joy for the final time before May 20th.
After Founder’s Day, the games begin. The library becomes Vassar’s Cornucopia — finding a good table is as rare as escaping the games’ initial brawl with useful weapons and supplies. The worst spots are akin to hiding in the arena’s thin trees and hoping none of the passing by alliances look up. These “alliances,” too, are critical in Vassar’s games. This period sees friend groups getting together to claim the biggest tables at the library and Crafted Kup and to snag the best open grass spots on the quad. But, just like the Hunger Games, these alliances crumble. Each member of the friend group eventually drops off, finishing finals and traveling home at different times, allowing the falsehood of their loyalty to be laid bare.
Tributes from Main House are already set up for success: their immediate access to food, resources, and mail saves them critical minutes in time spent studying. That being said, their sheltered lifestyle and freedom to seldom leave home can cause them to underestimate the brutality of the exams they soon face. The five quad houses are fairly evenly matched, although between them Jewett’s study pods and pristine basement and Davi’s renovated everything are sure to keep the tributes from these respective houses in relatively higher spirits during the study period. All bets are off for Cushing and Noyes, with Cushing’s distance from virtually the whole campus and Noyes’s tendency to live up to its name keeping both of them from peak productivity. Joss is similarly positioned, although those in Joss are underestimated for their nearness to Arlington, with many tributes honing their skills in secret at SoBol and the Crafted Kup.
During finals week, no matter how well prepared our Vassar tributes are, or think they are, the Capitol sets its traps deliberately; Blodgett Courtyard is just the first (and certainly not last) place hornet nests are beginning to take shape. There’s a theory that if you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you, but that doesn’t apply to our problem — we do actually live with the Capitol’s tracker jackers. And, chillingly similar to the Hunger Games’ cannons, fire alarms are certain to go off in the most populated of locations at their peak times. Students hoping to catch a brief lunch so as not to lose too much study time are guaranteed to have to wait outside the Deece for at least thirty minutes before being allowed to go back inside and wait in the thirty minute line for global.
Suffice it to say, few Vassar students will remain standing by the end of these games. And Founder’s Day is a placating prerequisite to this violent chaos. Although there’s not much we can do on an individual scale, I sense an uprising taking form; regardless, being aware of the system we are constantly conforming to is the first step. Dress up in your carnival costumes, have a blast with your friends, but never forget the battle you’ll have to win by the end of the month. And may the odds be ever in your favor.