Drag Ball takes Oberlin

1.700 gender-bent Obies to take Wilder by storm Saturday

On Saturday night Wilder Student Union will host an event that will make every all-campus party you've ever been to look like a girl scout sleepover. The ninth annual, $20,000 Drag Ball will open its doors Saturday at 10 p.m. to an anticipated crowd of 1,700 Oberlin drag kings and queens. If you have never been to the Ball, it is guaranteed to be unlike anything you have ever seen, featuring all the wild sexual deviance of a Porkies sequel. If you are a Drag Ball veteran, this year's Ball is guaranteed to have surprises in store for you.

It is impossible to escape the hype of the event, which has employed over 100 people including students, faculty, staff, and members of the community.

This year's Drag Ball boasts an addition of a fourth dance floor and the largely anticipated "stairway to heaven" extension to the infamous runway competition. "It will be more outrageous than ever. If it weren't outrageous it would be pointless to put it on," said Drag Ball's Prince Charming and event mastermind Chris Baymiller. "With four dance floors we are virtually taking over the whole building."

The grandest addition this year will concern the evening's main event: the runway competition. "The runway has always been the high mark of the evening. We have been working on crowd control, it has always been a hassle to get up to 90 contestants into main lounge. I was thinking about how to get them into there and I thought it would be perfect if they could just swoop in." The swooping will be made possible by what Baymiller describes as a "huge modular monstrosity" of stairs that the contestants will use to access the runway from above.

Contestants will drag down a runway to the beats of senior Paul Davis. When asked to comment on his runway strut music Davis said, "I just need to let people know that there's going to be too much sauce. Too much sauce at this event. Everything I play is going to be saucy as hell. I'm going to have sauce coming out body parts people didn't even know about."

As if this celestial descent of sauce was not reward enough, the winners of the runway competition will be escorted by stretch limousine to Ritz-Carlton in Cleveland for a night of expenses-paid partying. "We tried to think of something to do for a prize, and we didn't think that it would cut it to give certificates to the co-op bookstore, it had to be something really gracious, more in the spirit of drag and the outrageousness of the event," said Baymiller.

But the "stairway to heaven" is not the only monstrous new addition. This year's ball will premier live-feed video wall, a Grecian Bath lounge area, and a movie theatre featuring B-movies from Japanimation to Betty Page.

The extravaganza has grown from its small beginnings in the basement of Fairchild Hall. Originally held to support the social community of gay men on campus, Drag Ball has transformed into an all campus event.

"It is the only campus event that draws from virtually every community on this campus, which I think is spectacular. It draws from every sub group on campus and it's even a town event. I even had my former little leaguers come in drag," said Baymiller.

Baymiller made the Ball what it is today, offering the space of Wilder Hall first in 1993, when the conservative administration, concerned with Oberlin's image as a "gay mecca" threatened to rain on the party.

"The administration didn't want this kind of thing to happen at first. When I took over it was pretty low key. We were printing fliers late night on the photo copy machine. It started so small and it grew to this, the biggest campus event."

But the event is even bigger than that. Entering the national public eye through a Rolling Stone feature and through wide recognition in the national LGBTU community, this years Ball is sure to stir up a lot of high profile attention.

"We have taken the liberty of inviting Drew Carry, Rosie O'Donnel, Howard Stern and Robin," says Baymiller. "These are all people who would appreciate the theatre and the good times."

Opposition from the religious right gives rise to interesting and less "good times" kinds of questions. Though the massive popularity of the radical gender bending nature of the Ball is evidence of the general open-mindedness of the Oberlin community, demonstrations by religious groups on campus are expected again this year. At the same time 'Sco organizer Shirley Adkins says "It's not about any statement. It's just about having fun," Baymiller adds "If you don't think that this is a consciousness raising experience, step into the real world and try to talk about it."

But in Oberlin, far away from the real world, it is the only thing people are talking about.

Doors to Drag Ball open at 10 p.m. The runway competition starts at Midnight.

You go girl, or is it boy? Drag Ball runway contestants know how to work it.