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During my years of higher education I, like most college students, felt the need to assert my independence and maintain an off-campus address. Essentially, I wanted to feel grown-up. This was looked on as particularly subversive at the private, Catholic, liberal arts school I attended. Nothing good could possibly come out of students fraternizing without the supervision of the monks, nuns or the residence hall advisors! There was no end to the havoc we could wreak if left to our own devices.

They were right to a certain degree.

We did drink, smoke, have sex and do drugs whenever we had the chance. And I'm pretty sure that satisfying regular cases of "the munchies" with garlic cheesebread and extra cheese caused me to surpass the standard Freshman Fifteen. Needless to say, most of what little money we had went to our vices before our landlords. The result of not paying rent was a shocking and rude awakening for me and many of my trying-hard-to-be-adult friends. The uncomfortable phone call back home to solicit funds ended with the inevitible "I Told You So" and we swore to be better with our money the next month. What we needed was a way to bring in some extra cash quickly. There had to be a way to make money and still have fun.

Those of us living at 33 W. Minnesota Street found our salvation in a keg party.

It was brilliant, although not our own idea. We pooled together the loans from our parents and bought a few kegs and scads of Solo cups. We got some friends and their band to set up in the big room upstairs, hung posters all over town, told everyone we knew (well, the cool people) and waited for the throngs to arrive. We charged each person $3 for a cup. By the end of the night, we had made enough money to cover the kegs, the cups, the cheesebread and the next month's rent! It probably goes without saying that this became a semi-regular event at our place.