On a recent Saturday at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Olivia Suskowicz, a sophomore, got ready for a party.
She picked an outfit, grabbed her sorority sister and headed out the door to join hundreds of other college students at a fraternity house where a D.J. was already spinning tunes.
The workout was set to begin at noon.
Suskowicz, 19, was going to a “wellness darty.” The events on college campuses — which are causing a stir on TikTok — have some people trading the dimly lit rooms and mysterious mixed drinks of yore for daytime parties featuring cold plunges, saunas and nonalcoholic beverages.
“I’m really into wellness; I feel like kind of everyone is right now,” Suskowicz said. She bought a $10 ticket for the event, thinking, “Oh, this is right up my alley.”
The event kicked off with some yoga, followed by a HIIT class and, for the competitively inclined, push-up and plank challenges. Instead of beers, some participants shotgunned energy drinks.
Videos from events like this one have garnered millions of views on TikTok, where millennials and Gen X-ers have placed them side by side with videos or anecdotes from their college heydays that offered a strong contrast: crowded frat basements and D.J. sets, drunken high jinks and large quantities of alcohol.
Of course, many of the Gen Z students in attendance said there was no shortage of old-school partying, and that these events were just a bonus. But at a time when partying culture has changed — between awkward dance floors, the pressure of being filmed or photographed, and younger people’s more moderate drinking habits — some millennials and Gen X-ers took the wellness videos as a personal insult.
“IDK about a ‘wellness darty’ but this was a darty in 2017 at 11 a.m.,” wrote Tori Keghlian, a physician assistant who lives in Astoria, in her video showing a D.J. set in a tent full of strobe lights and hundreds of people jumping and dancing, many with their drinks in the air.
“Binghamton SantaCon 2017,” Keghlian, 28, recalled fondly in an interview, with a laugh. “Quite the contrast from a wellness darty starting early Saturday morning.” Keghlian considers herself a Zillennial, the micro-generation right on the cusp between Gen Z and Millennials.
In another video, Rachael Field, 38, describes raucous nights with her friends at Northwestern University, reminiscing about flaming shots that once singed off a classmate’s eyebrow. “The only thing we did well was party,” Field, a producer who lives in Los Angeles, says in the video.
Looking at the workouts and cold plunges, Field said in a phone interview, “I could not have imagined being in college and that being fun.” But, she added, she has sympathy for young people navigating college in the digital era. “I’m really grateful we have so little documentation,” she said of her college years.
Consider these events yet another entry in the ever-widening, and oft-overanalyzed, expanse between millennials and Gen Z. There have been debates over socks, the tightness of gym clothes, stares, middle parts and being cringe.
For the organizers of the events, the outrage may have been part of the point.
Aydan Child, founder of the wellness event organization Peak Pulse, said he had been hosting these events for years, but admitted he has more recently used the term “wellness darty” as a bit of slick marketing. It is partly to “rage bait the millennials,” he added with a laugh.
Marty Mocs, 24, said he founded Sweat & Soak, which organized the University of Alabama event, as a way to mix different kinds of fun. “The whole emphasis is to still have that high energy, party-like atmosphere that college students crave, but doing it through a way where you’re going to feel good after,” said Mocs, of Boca Raton, Fla.
Even if students are partying and drinking less, some Gen Z-ers ask: Is that so bad?
“I’m going to sound a little harsh,” said Riley Meyer, a sophomore at the University of Alabama, “but these people are older and they should know the repercussions of not having balance by that age.” Meyer, who is studying public relations and was paid $50 to take pictures of the Sweat & Soak event, added that there was also a more classic darty happening nearby.
Kaitlyn Weidenbruch, 20, posted a video defending her University of Florida classmates who attended the events.
“There’s a disconnect here,” she said in an interview, adding that some of the commenters under her video pointed out that earlier generations “would have been so hung over” that they couldn’t attend the daytime events.
She saw a problem with that: “If there was not a single Saturday in your entire four years at college where you were capable of getting up at 10 a.m., that’s a problem for your generation and not a failing on ours,” she said.
But there was something timeless, she added, about shaking one’s fist at generations past. “I feel like every generation wants to be able to say that they were the last to have some formative experience,” she said, adding, “It’s like this need to feel unique.”
Keghlian, the physician assistant, said she encouraged activities that did not center drinking. But she also felt social media had turned wellness into a performance.
Earlier generations, she said, experienced a mix of “partying like crazy and then you kind of did your wellness and workout stuff off of the internet.”
For her part, Meyer, the Alabama student, said she also went out with her friends after the wellness darty. “That night, I did get behind a D.J. booth,” she added.
Suskowicz, her classmate, felt both activities were normal ways to socialize in college. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Isn’t it a good thing that we care about our bodies and care about what’s healthy for us?”
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