This past Friday, in one last-ditch attempt to facilitate ridding the student body of stress before finals descend, Muhlenberg College hosted a Silent Disco Party.

Having only heard bits and pieces of news concerning this new trend, I really didn’t know what to expect.

I thought it would be a silent room with lots of people dancing and having fun despite having no music. I quickly realized how little sense this made. In my hilariously wrong viewpoint, this would’ve consisted of a completely silent room and people dancing to absolutely no music.

A Silent Disco turns out to be a lot more fun than what I originally pictured. I walked up to the table near the entrance of the Event Space, and I was handed a pair of headphones. There was a switch on the headphones that changed their luminescent glow from green, to red, to blue, and correspondently changed the music playing to one of three stations.

Green (my personal favorite channel) was music from the late nineties or early two-thousands, so a little bit older than what we tend to hear at parties or on the radio. It featured music that was a little less common to hear nowadays and, at least for me, was sort of refreshing and amusing to listen to. We got to hear classics such as Vanilla Ice, Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield, and See You Again by Hannah Montana.

The Red station was music that I categorize as pretty typical for college parties. It consisted of a lot of rap and electronic-esque music. (Please forgive my shortcomings in accurately describing music.)

Finally, Blue was also pretty common current radio hits. Although this station also featured some tunes from ten years back or so, it generally sounded like a Top 40 sort of channel.

This night was super fun, and weird in the best way, because as I walked into the room, I was faced by a small crowd of people dancing in a silent room. But when I put my headphones on, I was immersed in a full-fledged party.

I joined my circle of friends and I discovered two pretty cool things that occur in a silent disco.

One; you get to pick your own preference of music. This means that you and your friends also get to coordinate your music tastes and dance the night away without any pesky mood-killers in the form of particularly disliked songs that pop up.

Two; on the other hand, there are people around you who are listening to different music. It’s a really amazing thing to watch people listening to their own respective songs, but still dancing together and having a wonderful time. What a lovely, albeit cheesy, I know, metaphor for sharing differences but yet still connecting with people.

So there you have it, folks. In case anyone is disillusioned by your standard dance party and needs a change of scene, here’s a positive review by at least one kid who can vouch for the abundant joy that is the Silent Disco.

Happy Dancing!