Electric light parade, water balloons mark Midnight Yell

  DAVE HILL/Daily Bruin Senior Staff UCPD officers watch
over a midnight yell water fight last quarter on Glenrock Avenue
during finals week. Festivities during midnight yell were calmer
this year than last.

By Timothy Kudo and Scott B.
Wong
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Years from now students looking back on their college years will
remember graduation, convocation, the flowing hills of Westwood
““ and the guy who ran down Glenrock Avenue in a G-string,
Santa cap and an 18-inch phallus strapped to his waist during
Midnight Yell.

“It’s been so long since I’ve last done
it,” said Jay Spence, a fourth-year psychology student.

A far cry from the year before when police in riot gear stormed
Westwood, this year’s Midnight Yell took a more prankish
approach.

Apartment dwellers dropped water balloons on Glenrock’s
passers-by as an electric light parade romped down Kelton Avenue to
the yells of students everywhere.

At least one spectator supported this new tradition at UCLA.

“I was at the very first parade. I wrapped the first
string of lights,” said Cynthia Mosqueda, an alumna who
graduated from UCLA in 1999. “I love how new traditions get
started.”

On Kelton, students relieved finals stress by transforming
themselves into superheros, Robin Hood in green tights, a spotted
giraffe with four human legs, an ape, a Christmas tree and other
bizarre creatures of the night.

Two blocks away, students used hundreds of water balloons,
hoses, buckets, and when all else failed, grocery bags, to assault
each other on the east and west sides of Glenrock.

“It looks like good clean fun,” said UCLA Deputy
Fire Marshal John McGuire, who supervised the battle alongside a
dozen police officers to prevent anything from getting out of
control.

Meanwhile, the parade assumed the shape of a Bourbon Street
Mardi Gras festival as resident spectators cheered from their
balconies to paraders below. Stereo speakers, powered by a car,
blasted the music from Disneyland’s Main Street Electrical
Parade.

Parade centerpiece Harrison Hayes was wrapped in Christmas tree
lights from head to toe.

“It gets bigger every quarter,” said Hayes, who
co-founded the parade with friend Aaron Bitzer, a second-year
graduate student, during finals week in fall 1999.

Bitzer, who assumed the role of parade director, said he took
extra safety precautions this year and equipped himself with a
florescent orange vest and two long traffic controller lights so he
could direct marchers out of harm’s way from motorists.

“It’s a non-destructive way of relieving
stress,” Bitzer said.

Some participants saw the parade as an alternative to
disturbances that have, in past years, accompanied a much older
UCLA tradition, the Midnight Yell.

“It’s none of the stuff they were doing down on
Glenrock,” said a fifth-year electrical engineering student
who identified himself as Superfro, sporting an afro wig and
cape.

With water balloons thrown at participants and firecrackers lit
at their feet, many reached the end of the parade wet and
ear-shocked.

From a balcony, some students found pleasure in dousing
pedestrians with large buckets of water as they walked three
stories below on the sidewalk.

“Usually, we go up Kelton and then back the other way down
the street,” Bitzer said.

“But this time, I didn’t want to lead everyone
through that stuff again,” he said.

On the last night of Midnight Yell, revelers on Glenrock
gathered in the middle of the street to march and celebrate the end
of a successful war.

Police tackled and ticketed one person after he lit a soggy
phone book on fire. Others who threw water balloons at police had
their names passed on to the dean of students for possible
reprimand, according to police.

But, not to worry. The water balloon warrior nicknamed
“Terminator” reminded everyone that things would carry
on again at the end of winter quarter.

“I’ll be back,” he said.