At midnight, on November 19, over 130 Hopkins students sat in their seats at the Rotunda movie theater, awaiting the premiere of the penultimate film of the Harry Potter Series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I.”
The Residential Advisory Board, RAB, provided Hopkins students with the unique opportunity to view one of the most highly anticipated movies of the year. RAB was aware early on about the student body’s eagerness to see the movie.
“We were approached by a lot of people as early as September to plan something for the premiere,” senior community advisor of RAB Lara India said.
According to RAB, they chose the Rotunda because it was arguably the best choice as a place to hold such a premiere.
“We knew we could transport students there in a timely fashion,” Shaune T. Grahe, the Assistant Direct of Residential Life and an Advisor of RAB, said, “We had weekly meetings and during those weekly meetings we discussed that possibility and Lara and Sara Capponi [a junior and another community advisor] went down to the Rotunda to talk to the management there.”
For the event, RAB charged 10 dollars. This package included the ticket and transportation to and from the Rotunda. The desk on the breezeway was to open at 11 a.m., but students had already began to line up there as early as 10:00 a.m. When the breezeway station opened, the tickets sold out in under 15 minutes
“We had a line that stretched pretty much [from] the breezeway table where we were selling the tickets all the way back to the steps of Remsen and Mergenthaler,” Capponi said. “We let [students] buy [tickets] in blocks of four, [so each student could buy up to four tickets] and I think that is one of the reasons we sold out so fast.”
“I got there at exactly eleven, but the line was already really long, so I went to the theater in Towson instead,” freshman Nicole Albstein said. “There were a lot of Hopkins [students] at the Towson theater, though.”
After the tickets sold out, over 350 students were left without tickets and were put onto a waitlist, hoping for the possibility of garnering tickets from RAB if made available.
“We tried to get a second screen at the Rotunda once we found out so many [students] were interested, but the owner was unable to get a second copy of the film,” India said.
Many students were able to get tickets to other theaters in town. From the movie theater in Towson Mall to the IMAX theater at the Inner Harbor, Hopkins students represented a large portion of the audience viewing the film.
“[On the night of the event], we had a bus that went back and forth between campus and the Rotunda,” India said. “Depending on the student’s ticket number, the first 44 students were on the first bus to leave campus. At the theater, we lined up [the students] by ticket number for seating rather than a whole free for all.”
“About 20 students or so were dressed up the premiere,” freshman Suz Amedi said. “It was good and fun to see [the movie] with all [my] new college friends.”
When the movie ended at 2:20 a.m., students managed to return back to campus with great alacrity.
“We were worried how we were going to get everybody out of the theater after the film,” India said. “Some people called escort vans so they were able to get students out more quickly.”
“We were able to get everybody out and we were able to get back onto campus at 3 a.m.,” Caponni said.
While RAB had organized a number of programs during the year ranging from community clothing drives to dinning meetings, this program marks the first occassion that RAB coordinated a trip to a movie premiere.
“That was pretty exciting for us, especially because there was so much interest in having it, Capponi said. “A lot of residential advisors (RA’s) wanted to bring their residents too, and a lot of residents asked if this could be something we could do.”
“It went so well,” India commented, “if there was interest to do it again, I wouldn’t hesitate.”
Although there are no current plans for organizing another movie night in the near future, it will be up to popular demand to organize another movie night event as well as other community programs in time.
