At 9 p.m. on a Monday night, a hush fell over a darkened Memorial Commons. Then lights flashed on and the harmonies of a cappella filled the room.

The first big a cappella concert of the year, on the first day of Winter Carnival, featured a crowd-pleasing confluence of vocal talent and pop favorites.

The energy was reciprocated: Friends sang for friends in the audience, and friends cheered on their crooning friends.

“I found a group of brothers.”

For Walter Washington ’19 of Fleetwood, N.Y., singing with the Deansmen is central to being a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ student.

“I joined my sophomore year after feeling a little bit weird about being at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and not really having that sense of community,” said Washington, who is also student government president. “So I found a group of brothers and knew from then on that whatever is going on, throughout the night they got my back.”

“A cappella is pretty amazing because it brings people together from all different walks of life,” said Sophie Mortman ’18 of Sharon, Conn., a member of Take Note.

For the high notes of the Winter Carnival a capella concert, take a look — and a listen.

The Deansmen

“If I Ain’t Got You” by Alicia Keys

The Merimanders

Mashup of “No Scrubs” by TLC and “No” by Meghan Trainor

TakeNote

“Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen

The Manic Optimists

“Dreaming with a Broken Heart” by John Mayer

The Crosstones

“Wild Things” by Alessia Cara

https://vimeo.com/252595305

Led by David Brustlin ’09, the Deansmen, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ all-male a cappella ensemble, perform for newly accepted students to the Class of 2013 during a program of welcome held in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall.

Somerville is an incubator for young alums adjusting to the real world, says Swita Charansomboon '04, standing in Davis Square near a familiar mass-transit symbol. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen.

It’s 8:15, and I’m on the MBTA’s Red Line doing the morning-commute thing into Boston from Somerville, Mass. Half-asleep in my wrinkled business-casual clothes, I’m on autopilot, mouthing the conductor’s words: “Daaavis”…”Porter”…”Hahvahd”…”Doors open on the right.” I plug into my iPod, and the Deansmen’s “Fliptop Twister” transports me back to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, to my fourth-floor room in Adams where I can hear the Deansmen singing on Olin’s terrace.

Suddenly, one face among the morning commuters strikes a clear note in my head. The Patagonia jacket, the messy bun, the glasses — she was in one of my psychology classes. Jacky? Janet? Our eyes meet across the heads of other riders, and after two seconds of recognition we both look away.

I didn’t feel much like a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ie that morning. Neither did she, apparently.

But why not? I always miss ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ during my morning commute. It starts with the small wish to enjoy just one more long breakfast in Commons with friends. That starts a domino effect, as I recall when the guy upstairs ate seven hot peppers on a dare during Junk Food Night at Commons, walks to Dairy Joy during Short Term with all my hallmates, and the happy feeling of finding a slip for a package in my mailbox.

When the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ campus tips at graduation and spills 450 or so graduates into the real world, many young alums (not to mention grads from other NESCAC schools) end up about in and around Somerville. According to College records, around 150 so-called BOLD alums (Bobcats of the Last Decade) live in the three Somerville zip codes — probably more if you count the usual number of “undocumented” young ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ies.

It’s small wonder that the “ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ies in Somerville” Facebook group says that you can’t go to a bar in Davis Square and not run into a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ie.”

If we chose to attend ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ for high-minded reasons, we choose to live in Somerville and similar neighborhoods for more prosaic ones, like cheap rent or access to the T and I-93. Like college admissions, there’s a legacy effect, too. For example, Sherika Blevins ’05 moved to Somerville because a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ friend, now her current roommate, had preceded her, settling in Magoun Square.

Beyond convenience, Somerville is also an incubator, its comfortable, laid-back atmosphere helping young alums adjust to city life. “The typical ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ie is usually not the city type,” suggests Mihoko Maru ’05. “So it makes sense for us to live in Somerville. It has an off-campus housing feel, which I appreciate since I always lived in houses at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.”

Last night, as I walked down Holland Avenue toward Teele Square for a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ gathering, I moved among Tufts students with backpacks and young professionals toting logoed messenger bags. Even the pace felt the same as walking the Quad.

Somerville is also where new challenges accelerate our sense of personal change (which is part of the reason we might feel ambivalent about our ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ie identity on the T). These common challenges are the same for everybody, says Blevins. “It’s hard to find a job, and the starting pay for college grads is pretty sad. It’s a hard, big dose of reality.”

The new post-ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ reality can make us question choices we made at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. A gathering at a friend’s house under the pretense of “catching up” might instead focus on feeling trapped in a job we took just to pay off student loans. Or we might envy business or engineering graduates from major universities who seem to have their entire careers mapped out. We fret about not choosing a job in our major field and losing touch with our passion — or we question whether it was our passion in the first place. We worry about running out of time to figure it all out. “Scared” is a word I hear a lot during our gatherings.

Katie Harris ’04 runs the Interlibrary Borrowing Office at MIT. “I had no idea what I wanted to do after ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½,” she says. “I only knew that I wanted to avoid working in a corporate atmosphere.” After a short stint in a bookstore, she found the MIT job. Now with a better sense of her strengths, she hopes to go to graduate school. “I can take what was a practical career move and infuse it with something I love, like studying art, cultures, and history,” she says.

Real-world pressures get personal, too. A college romance fails the test of distance, or good friends drift apart. “Sadly, it’s been very hard to stay in touch with those who moved elsewhere,” says Harris. “Facebook helps, though.”

One recent grad talked about how his friendship with another grad tensed up after they shared an apartment. “We both needed to save money and we were friends at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, so I thought it would be more of the same fun. But we were on very different schedules, so we couldn’t hang out after work. It was just completely different from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.” They each found their own place after their lease expired.

Asked what they missed about ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, these young alums listed a number of specifics — like running into friends at the library on late nights or adventures in Maine — that complement my own memories. Taken together, they create both a wistful longing for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community and a hope to find it in the real world.

“The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community gives students emotional well-being,” Maru says. At BU, where she just completed a one-year master’s program in psychology, “I really had to plan if I wanted to see people.” This contradiction — missing ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, finding a bit of it in Somerville, yet needing to move on — fuels the conflicting emotions in recent grads who pass by each other in Somerville.

The future? The indie band Modest Mouse sings, “We’ll all float on OK.” And secretly, we suspect that when we eventually figure out what we really want to do, we will do better than OK.

By Swita Charanasomboon ’04
A summa cum laude major in French and psychology, Swita Charanasomboon ’04 was a research analyst for McKinsey and Co. after graduation and is now studying at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Greg Arata ’96 performs with 1990s Deansmen John Shim ’98 (left), Jim Roberts ’99 (behind), and Jay Postell Pringle ’98 (right). Photograph by H. Lincoln Benedict '09.

The alumni Deansmen who celebrated the a cappella group’s 50th anniversary last Nov. 2–4 turned up the volume on their shared memories — all the way to 11.

There were powerful public moments, like Saturday night’s Chapel concert — see the slide show at left — featuring current and former Deansmen. The family feeling was quite literal, in fact, for Deansmen Matt Sullivan ’94 and his father-in-law Russell Baker ’64. “It was the first time they have ever sung together,” says Matt’s wife, Kristin Baker Sullivan ’94, the daughter of Russell Baker and Sharon Fisher Baker ’65. “It was such fun to watch them having so much fun.”

Kristin, who recalls how Matt and her father initially “bonded over being Deansmen” way back when, watched the Chapel concert with her mother. And from Sharon Baker’s perspective, the weekend figured at first to be a tagalong affair behind her husband. “But it turned out to be so much more than that,” Sharon says. “There was a surprising sense of being a part of the Deansmen family.”

The harmonious mix of Deansmen past and present was like a “superimposition of eras,” says Matt. For Russell, the embrace of Deansmen young and old quieted his worries about remembering words and music. “Although the voice has gone, the kid in me still had a great time,” he says.

Other Deansmen moments were private but still in perfect pitch. Post-concert, Greg Arata ’96 and fellow Deansmen retired to a residence hall stairwell, where songs sung among friends recaptured a cherished sense of solidarity. “We sang for each other,” Arata says. “We pulled out songs from ’93 that we had performed only once. It is astounding what came flooding back. Guys just kept shifting configurations — if you knew it, you joined in.

“To revisit that, to find again that sense of harmony and brotherhood, was the highlight. If only for a night.” [Slide show]

Audio of the Deansmen singing songs from their 50th anniversary concert.

By H. Jay Burns