Being in the Big Ten Conference, athletic events are extremely important to students at UW, especially Badger Football Games at Camp Randall, our stadium. Home games are usually packed and extremely energetic. Students are very involved in traditional cheers and songs while in the stands, and there is even a day at the beginning of the school year for all Freshmen and new students to head to Camp Randall to learn these songs and the possible hand motions that go with them. UW students, drunk and sober alike, completely animate when the band plays these songs. The amount of school spirit here is extremely refreshing.
Every year, there are two major drinking holidays: Halloween and Mifflin. Halloween attracts thousands of people from other campuses for its infamous reputation and its street music festival, Freakfest, which takes place on State Street, a pedestrian-friendly commerical mall. Mifflin, or "Mifflin Street Days", is a weekend-long party that takes place in almost every house on Mifflin Street. It originated in the 70's as a protest to the war in Vietnam and has evolved into one of the sloppiest and craziest weekends on any college campus. The police try to get involved as much as possible each year, to little avail. It lasts from early morning until...well, early morning again. There are few hours that people are NOT partying this weekend. It's the last weekend that people are in Madison before finals in the Spring, so people see it as their last chance to really party before going home for the summer.
The most popular organizations would have to be our ballroom dance club or PubCom, the Publications Committee. PubCom has several branches to it, two of which I belong to myself. I'm part of Working Title, our creative writing club, and Souvenirs, one of our several student-run magazines that we produce annually. PubCom is generally more for those interested in a literary field, but it also includes branches like theatre, which is responsible for putting together and hosting free screenings of movies in one of our two unions a few times a month.
Yup, that's right, we have TWO unions! Union South was just rebuilt and finished this past spring, and is incredible, to say the least. There is a rockwall, a bowling alley, movie theater, concert hall, bar, restaurants, cafes, and several study areas and meeting spaces inside. Our other union, Memorial Union, is on the other side of campus, right on Lake Mendota with it's own Terrace and swimming dock in the summer. There is tons of windsurfing, sailing, and boating in in the summer and spring months, and, when the weather is nice, the Terrace is filled with people of all ages, sharing pitchers of beer.
Although there are many activites for drinkers, there are also lots of things available for underagers or non-drinkers. Aside from the numerous activites in Union South, there are many free events like ballroom dancing lessons or various workshops that take place weekly. We have an amazing acapella group, The Madhatters, that have performances throughout the year. This group actually just performed at the White House recently! You can also get tickets as cheap as $10 for the Madison Symphony Orchestra with your student ID. My favorite event would have to be the annual Yule Ball that PubCom hosts in December (which they just started in 2010). As a Harry Potter lover, it was amazing.