By: Abby Paras '24
In a list that includes the likes of John Tyler and Margaret Thatcher, Pete Davidson seems like an odd choice for a Charter Day speaker.
Well, he didn’t exactly speak on Charter Day. The SNL star’s appearance was initially scheduled for William & Mary’s 328th Charter Day, which fell on February 11. This day is meant to celebrate the College being granted an official royal charter from King William III and Queen Mary II of England. It is a time-honored tradition here at William & Mary, so it is understandable that the administration would want to make it memorable.
So, they announced that students would be invited to a Virtual Conversation with Pete Davidson.
However, as the time for the virtual conversation drew nearer, memes began appearing on the Facebook group, Swampy Memes for TWAMPy Teens, about Pete Davidson cancelling at the last minute in a similar manner to Dr. Anothony Fauci, who was scheduled to speak in January but appeared a few weeks later. The jokes came and went, and eventually the students were sent an email that said Pete Davidson’s event would be pushed back to March 6 due to “scheduling conflicts”.
It seems that pushing the event back almost a month caused the hype around it to die out a little bit, and by the time the event actually occurred, reactions on campus were mixed. While Marie Sindeh ‘24 stated that it was “nice to see him in his natural element”, other students were underwhelmed by Davidson’s jokes and overall level of enthusiasm.
One of the first questions asked by the moderators, Erik Wells ‘23 and Megan Rudman ‘23, was “What are you wearing?”, to which Davidson showed off his green North Face hoodie. The rest of the conversation was defined by a similar tone, which many students pointed out. Ultimately, most of the issues with the event stemmed from the fact that the format was confusing from the get-go.
Keenan Parker ‘24 had many thoughts to share on the subject. She felt that the event “definitely did have a bit of an identity crisis”, and part of that was because of the virtual nature of it. She and her friends watched it together “and there were moments [they] all just looked at each other jointly confused/amused by the questions that were being asked and Pete’s abstract answers.”
The questions, most of which were submitted by students, were things like, ‘What would you tell your 20-year-old self?’ and ‘What would you be doing if you weren’t a comedian?’ to which Davidson answered ‘wear a condom’ and ‘selling cocaine’ respectively.
She also felt that “Pete hitting his cigarette-themed dab pen and chugging unidentified liquid from a mug the whole time was like the peak manifestation of this energy.”
Many noted that Davidson looked like he didn’t care very much about the event, which brought the energy levels down, despite the moderators trying their best to keep up the pace of the chat. While students reacted positively to the moderators and acknowledged their skills in responding to Pete’s somewhat vague answers, they were still a bit disappointed not to be able to get more out of the event.
Parker’s final note was a question that many students had been wondering after the event: “How much money did we pay him for 50 minutes of him chilling in his mom’s basement and telling us a vague story about his friend’s robbery experience?”
The stories, though entertaining, seemed to go on without any sense of organization or time. There was little interaction with the audience, which, while understandable for an event that took place over Zoom, was still underwhelming for most students.
The consensus seems to be that, though it was interesting and fun to see Pete Davidson give a talk at William & Mary, it felt less like a Charter Day event and more like an awkward listen-in to a casual chat, Davidson didn’t seem all that invested. Perhaps this is just a side effect of being in a pandemic and having to do all the main events virtually, and perhaps part of it has to do with Davidson not actually being in-person either.
Looking forward, there is hope that the next Charter Day celebration will be better, since there is a chance we may have more in-person events. Though the reaction to this year’s celebration was not 100% negative, there was a lot of confusion and disappointment surrounding it, due to both internal and external circumstances.
