Personal Narrative: Memorial Debate Hall

Words: 714
Pages: 3

“I do hereby call this toasting session of the Conservative Party to order!” The Chairman, dressed in a crisp black tuxedo and spit-shined oxford shoes, slammed his mahogany gavel on the antique wooden table adjacent to his leather throne. Alongside the rest of the congregation, I snapped to my feet, swiveled to face the American flag, and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. After grueling over dozens of pages of calculus and economics homework the week prior, I was thrilled to be within the company of my closest friends at the William F. Buckley Jr. Memorial Debate Hall. The Hall was magnanimously donated to the party in 2015 through a set of invitation calls for the alumni banquet at the Yale Club. The old location, pungent with mold and as cramped as a NYC subway, was whisked into a call center for the event. Dozens of freshmen attempted to reach the myriad of alumni, cheerily opening conversations with, “Hello! Would you like to donate to the Optimates Society?” and typically receiving the shrill response of a disconnected phone …show more content…
“Why are you wearing a blazer? It’s Wednesday night – shouldn’t you be going to Toad’s Place?” one inquired. Another scrunched his face at me, smirking, “Oh, he’s going to be with all of his WASP friends.” I laughed in tandem with them, rolled my eyes, and retorted, “Hey, some of us have class tomorrow morning. Sometimes going to bourgeois events instead of nightclubs facilitates waking up on Thursday.” While they chuckled, the Buckley hall genuinely did serve as an escape for me. When I went to the hall, I knew that no one would shove a lukewarm Busch Light into my hand and tell me to drink up. I knew that I wouldn’t have to waste money to take an Uber back to campus from a repulsive frat house, and I especially knew that I wouldn’t be expected to cleanse the putrid stench of vomit from an overzealous