The Class of 1986 was a ‘his­toric’ class, so the fresh­men were told: they were the first to begin their Prince­ton years in the new social sys­tem of the res­i­den­tial col­leges. Accord­ing to their Class His­tory in the Nas­sau Her­ald, how­ever, the stu­dents car­ried on as the gen­er­a­tions before them. “We worked hard and we par­tied hard. This blend of con­ti­nu­ity and change, of tra­di­tion and tran­si­tion, would char­ac­ter­ize our four year stay at Old Nas­sau.” The ‘video year­book’ fea­tured here, in itself a reminder of the “class films” of the 1920s and 1930s, is an expres­sion of that expe­ri­ence. A fast-paced arrange­ment of video­taped snip­pets cap­tur­ing cam­pus events and stu­dent life, the 26 minute film is a cel­e­bra­tion of both old and new.

The video year­book, pro­duced by “Ground Floor Video,” a group of stu­dents under the direc­tion of Glenn Picher ’86, was filmed dur­ing the class’ junior and senior year. Meant as a com­ple­ment to the print year­book, accord­ing to the Prince, the film con­tains selec­tions from some thirty to forty hours of video­tape, accom­pa­nied by orig­i­nal music com­posed by Peter Cur­tiss ’86 (other music cred­its can be found at 25:55). The film is divided into seven chap­ters: Stu­dent Life (1:03), Aca­d­e­mics (5:33), Sports (7:08), Hol­i­days (10:39), Cam­pus issues (15:09), Spring (17:15), and Grad­u­a­tion week­end (20:50).

The sports and spring scenes, along with the Grad­u­a­tion week­end events were already tra­di­tional ele­ments in the class films of the 1920s. Incom­ing fresh­men were intro­duced to other Prince­ton tra­di­tions in the Spe­cial Class of 1986 issue of the Daily Prince­ton­ian. Some of those tra­di­tions are cap­tured in the “video year­book” fea­tured here. They include the bon­fire on Can­non Green after a major sports victory–in this case the foot­ball team’s “Big Three Title,” the first since 1967 (9:44, com­pare with the bon­fire of the Class of 1923); House Par­ties (19:29; com­pare with the class film of the Class of 1939); and “Arch Sing” (12:48), rem­i­nis­cent of the tra­di­tion of “Senior Singing” as seen in the Class of 1928 footage. The footage in the  “Grad­u­a­tion Week­end” (20:50), cap­tur­ing the P-rade, the break­ing of the pipes on Can­non Green, and the com­mence­ment cer­e­monies is very sim­i­lar to the films from six decades pre­vi­ous depict­ing the grad­u­a­tion of the Classes of 1921 and 1928.

Addi­tion­ally, more recent tra­di­tions fea­tured here include the “Nude Olympics (12:00), and the party activ­i­ties of “blow pong” (3:35 and 4:47), and what is assumed to be the “Trees and Trolls,” the annual rum­ble between the over 6 ft tall and the shorter mem­bers of the then still all-male eat­ing club, the Tiger Inn (4:23). Both activ­i­ties were accom­pa­nied by copi­ous amounts of beer. Dur­ing 1986’s fresh­men year the drink­ing age was raised from 18 to 21, mak­ing senior year the first year that most stu­dents could legally drink alcohol.

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est for the topic of “tra­di­tions” is the address of Sally Frank ’80 at the Woodrow Wil­son School on Novem­ber 20, 1985 (16:28). Ear­lier that year, Sally Frank had won her law­suit against the all-male eat­ing clubs of Cot­tage, Ivy, and Tiger Inn, which she had filed in 1979 after they refused her a chance to bicker due to her gen­der. Addi­tional issues addressed in the sec­tion ‘Cam­pus protests’ include the block­ade of the entrance to Nas­sau Hall on May 23, 1985 to protest Princeton’s  invest­ments poli­cies with respect to South Africa (15:09) and the Women’s Cen­ter sit-in of May 1, 1986 (16:52).

Within the video a few other faces have been iden­ti­fied as the following.

• Eng­lish pro­fes­sor John Flem­ing is shown lec­tur­ing (5:39)
• The late art his­to­rian John R. Mar­tin (5:56)
• Pres­i­dent Bill Bowen (6:32, appears again 19:05).
• The late art pro­fes­sor Jerry Buchanan cri­tiques a student’s work (5:42).
• Harold Med­ina ’09 is seen rid­ing in a golf cart (21:20)
• Dr. Ruth Wes­t­heimer makes a brief appear­ance (22:41)

This VHS tape is part of the Uni­ver­sity Archives’ His­tor­i­cal Audio­vi­sual Col­lec­tion (item no. 1324).