In defence of GUSA Ball

This Saturday, thousands of Glasgow uni students will descend upon Glasgow’s Hilton Hotel for a night of pretty decent food, wine, and ceilidh dancing.

For those of you who live under rocks, I’m referring to GUSA Ball. “What’s GUSA Ball?”, I hear you ask. Well young one, sit back and I’ll tell you.

GUSA Ball is the annual mass gathering of Glasgow’s fit and sporty. The night begins with an exquisite three-course meal (especially for us poor students who normally live on baked beans), complete with wine, followed by an awards ceremony and professional club photos, all before the guys and gals take to the dancefloor to work off some of that nervous energy. The night almost always culminates in a food fight and is definitely always followed by a massive Sunday sesh in Beer Bar.

However, in true University of Glasgow style, there are still plenty of people who feel the need to contest GUSA Ball and what it “stands for.”

Feelin fresh, feelin fly

During last year’s ball, YikYak errupted with angry anonymous Yakkers giving their opinion on the institution of sports balls. It was all very exciting. It seems that there are quite a few students who feel that GUSA Ball is nothing more than an excuse for attractive, popular people to look attractive and be popular together, whilst patting themselves on the back for being attractive and popular.

The anti-GUSA arguments mainly seemed to revolve around the idea that GUSA Ball is “elitist” and extravagant. Is it impossible to do anything at Glasgow these days without it resulting in protest and criticism?

First and foremost, of all the things to be offended about, why in heaven’s name would you choose a ball? I mean, lets think about this logically for a moment: a ball is just a fancy party. All GUSA Ball is, is essentially a house party in a nicer venue with nicer outfits and shitter music. Hardly a headline worthy controversy. It doesn’t stand for anything, believe me, it’s just people getting drunk and eating food and celebrating another year of great sporting achievement for our clubs. What’s so wrong with that? Our teams do incredibly well every year, with hockey, lacrosse and rugby (to name a few) winning competition after competition. They all have their own socials each week, obviously, but isn’t it quite cool to bring everyone together? Muay Thai, squash, ultimate frisbee: why shouldn’t they all get one night where they can celebrate GUSA as a student body. After all, the sports teams do a lot for the reputation of our university.

All of our sports teams train hard and deserve to party harder

Moaning about people being hot or having lots of friends is just bitter, so I’m not even going to respond to that.

In terms of elitism, GUSA Ball is actually relatively inclusive. The only requirements for a ticket to GUSA Ball are a gym membership and a membership with any of GUSA’s hundreds of sports clubs. With this in mind, next to Daft Friday, GUSA Ball is actually the most inclusive and non-elitist event we have. Unlike with the Law Ball or the Medics Ball, anyone can attend GUSA Ball whether they study Mech Eng or English Language, it literally doesn’t matter.

In terms of extravagance I ask again for you to look at Daft Friday, which involves big name acts and numerous events spanning 12 hours. Granted, it takes place in GUU and not in the Hilton, but still, when you factor in all of the expenses in terms of licensing, decorating and entertainment Daft Friday and GUSA Ball actually start level out, not to mention the fact that tickets are roughly the same price (marginally cheaper for GUSA Ball).

Fresher’s Week and Daft Friday blow bigger budgets than GUSA Ball.

All in all, almost every university in the UK hosts annual sports balls. They’re fun, they’re an excuse to get dressed up, and most of all they’re completely harmless. So please, this year, should you feel the need to complain about something then just remember that there really are far worse things happening at Glasgow University, and the tennis club wearing dresses and tuxes for a night shouldn’t really bother you.