Another flash rave at UNC-CH

Click here for video of this event.

Davis Library, UNC-Chapel Hill

10:30 p.m.

All is quiet. It’s finals, so there are plenty of students here, clickety-clicking away on their laptops. Nothing seems amiss in this vanilla, institutional facility with bright walls and floors that echo loudly with the squeaking of shoes.

But it’s a library, which means people talk mostly in whispers and little is heard aside from the occasional buzz of a ringing cell phone and the bright, cheery ‘ding’ that accompanies the opening of an elevator door.

It doesn’t exactly scream “Dance Club.”

It will get louder.

11 p.m.

Three students march some heavy audio equipment across the second-floor landing, aiming speakers towards the floor below.

Several people look up and, unfazed, go back to their work.

The floor, a long walkway, is deserted. For now.

11:30 p.m.

There will be no more studying tonight. Not with the buzz growing louder. Students are jockeying for position now, lining up elbow to elbow along the second-floor railing for the best view of the madness to take place below.

This is Rave Night at UNC-Chapel Hill.

11:45 p.m.
Students have packed the main floor. Arm to arm, shoulder to shoulder. It's hot. Moist. Humid. Loud. Because students will grab any opportunity to dress in costume, there are bananas on the loose, and dudes in '70s costumes, and a guy in a fake beard holding aloft an inflatable woman. Yes, that sort of inflatable woman.

And suddenly, it's midnight. The lights go down and the music goes up. The thump-thump-thumping beat of a techno-pop mix blares and the mass of students starts jumping, shaking, screaming, yelling.

A young woman is raised aloft and crowd-surfs her way across the room, occasionally tugging at her T-shirt, trying to stay clothed.

A dozen more crowd-surfers are passed, hand over hand, through the maelstrom. They're laughing, but there are plenty of dicey moments.

The crowd sways ominously, its momentum stronger than any one person. At least crowd-surfing student gets dropped and slams to the floor.

He gets up, smiling.

In 10 minutes, it's all over. The music stops, the students sing the UNC fight song, and leave. That's the idea of the flash rave, a massive tension-buster held now each semester during final exams.

The idea is to assemble several thousand of your best friends, converge on the library and dance around like crazy people for 10 minutes. You know, to get it out of your system.

"It was definitely cathartic," said Elizabeth Merritt, a freshman, minutes after emerging from the mosh pit. "Everyone needs to let off some steam and this is a pretty healthy way to do it."

The UNC Flash Rave began three semesters ago. It was somewhat covert then and surprised some students and library staff.

But the rave is no longer a secret. It has a Facebook page, where at least 5,600 students had pledged their participation, and was the subject of a recent story in the Daily Tar Heel, which reported on it as it would any other campus event expected to draw thousands of participants.

“The goal was definitely to make this a regular event and I think that is what it has become,” said Bobby Nieland, one of the student organizers, prior to the chaos. “I think I does provide a lot of stress relief. This year, especially, people know it’s coming. They are excited for it. They get to do something out of the ordinary; be extremely loud in a library.”

Swiftly, the dozen or so students who put the event together are in clean-up mode, rearranging chairs, sweeping dirt and gathering up their sound equipment. By 1 a.m., the library will be silent once again.

No students appeared visibly injured in the moments after the rave ended. But plenty had their chances, given the overpowering swaying of a crowd that numbered in the thousands.

A lot of students said they were happy to observe from above, on the second-floor overlook.

"We went to the first one and it was much tamer," said Arielle Wright, a sophomore. "That wasn't fun [tonight]. It was dangerous."