Videos: College Weeks Reunion Planned
Bermuda was where the girls were.
During the island’s annual College Weeks festivities — a tourism pernennial from the 1950s through the late 1970s — up to 10,000 students would spend their spring breaks in Bermuda, the overwhelming majority of them female.
“There are so many girls you can take your time to pick one ho’s really sharp,” a Dartmouth College freshman told the Associated Press [AP] in a wire service report on the 1969 festivities.
Bermuda hotels would provide free lunches and offer 50 cent beers to the vacationing students along with rock bands, limbo contests and beach parties.
“There are too many of us, and not enough boys,” complained a Rhode Island College co-ed about the lopsided female-male disparity at the 1969 College Weeks. “You can’t get to meet anyone …”
Boys begged to disagree. The appeal of the island to the heavily outnumbered male College Weeks participants was self-evident.
Vintage 1960s Bermuda College Weeks Promotional Film, Part One
“The idea is to get your free lunch, pick up a nice girl and take off to a nice uncrowded beach,” a Dartmouth athlete told the AP, adding Bermudians referred to the co-eds as “Longtails” because — like the sea birds — they returned to the island every spring.
College Weeks became a rite of spring for so many young Americans attending East Coast universities, Tourism Minister Wayne Furbert recently announced the island will be hosting a reunion in 2012 for now-graying participants.
The Bermuda Department of Tourism is encouraging baby boomers to stroll down memory lane with three days of events, dining and activities designed to capture the youthful energy and excitement of College Weeks.
Bermuda’s College Week Reunion will commence on March 15 and conclude March 17, 2012.
“The College Week Reunion will be a great way for folks who may have visited Bermuda during the heyday of their youth to come back and enjoy the island as an adult,” said Mr. Furbert. ”We felt it was about time that adults get to experience their own grown-up spring break in a setting that fits their desires for a relaxing, sophisticated experience.”
College Weeks Promotional Film, Part Two
College Weeks grew out of an earlier Ivy League rugby festival held in Bermuda.
Rugby Week began in 1935 as an invitational tournament between collegiate teams and Bermudians.
But by the early ’60s — with the introduction of fast and affordable jet airliners to the island — that small-scale sporting event had metamorphosised into an annual invasion by thousands of moped-riding, fun-seeking students.
“Age limits for drinking and operated the miniscule-engined motorbikes that almost everyone rents are casually enforced,” noted the 1969 AP wire service report. “The buzzing roar of motorbikes rying to exceed their top speeds of about 25 miles per hour hour can be heard almost everywhere all the time.
“Night life is crowded dances at beach clubs and beer-drinking singalongs in Hamilton nightspots.”
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Category: All, History, Videos
Great footage. But in today’s Bermuda where everything has to be done with a black slant, is this possible? Are there the black teens to fill the beds? Surely we could never tolerate such a white crowd again.
Ya, let’s take it back to the days where the only blacks allowed in the venues were the ones that were doing the serving. In fact let’s take it back to days where you allowed to whip the blacks. Those were the real glory days. Damn blacks, they ruin everything. PLEASE NOTE THE SARCASM. You are one stupid ignorant ass Joe.
Joe is an ass.
Damn…that was so freak’n white that it was blasted earieeeee. Brothers and sistaas had no place. That all said…that’s a comment for the times, not Bernews. And again. THANK YOU Bernews for doing such a great job in digging up so much old film. Keep it up!!!!!!!!!!!