The Saturday before break, while some students gathered at a friend’s apartment for Friendsgiving and others left early to head home for the holiday, the student baristas of Libe Cafe were celebrating by hosting their own “barista prom.”
Libe Prom was a new idea proposed this year, the brainchild of student managers Jack Beautz ’21 and Akua Kwakwa ’20, as well as the cafe supervisors Sarah Stefanik ’20, Suj Nam ’20 and Liz Larsen ’20.
“Libe Prom was just something we put together to have the staff dress up and spend some time together,” Beautz said. “We wanted to celebrate a great year for the cafe and thank the staff for all of their hard work.”
Daniel Ra / Sun Staff Photographer
Baristas work in Libe Cafe serving customers.
Students gathered in one of the rooms in Willard Straight Hall on November 23, the Saturday before Thanksgiving break, for their festivities, where they ate dinner, exchanged Secret Santa gifts and spent quality time with one another. Trading their usual name tags and aprons for floor-length dresses and suits, the Libe crew danced through the night in a room strewn with balloons, streamers, candles and string lights crafted from clear Starbucks cups.
Promposal signs borrowed from the Cafe itself dotted the walls as well. Much in the high-school tradition, students invited friends and dates by “promposing” with poster boards covered in caffeine puns, which fellow students might have seen hanging in the Cafe before and after the event.
Courtesy of Sarah Stefanik
Students gather with a promposal poster.
Emily Grigg `21, who’s been a barista at Libe Cafe for a year, both “promposed” to a friend and likewise got “promposed-to.”
“My close friend, Eli Schmidt ’21, asked me first on the bus on the way back from a marching band trip,” Grigg said. “I also made a sign with markers and glitter glue to prompose to them, but since they were sick for a while, it took me a while to find a shift they were going to be at.”
Schmidt said yes, laughing at the glittered sign reading “Roses are red, matcha is green, I’d love it a latte if you’d go to Libe Prom with me?”
Although Libe Prom was a brand-new event, student staff looked back on it fondly, and thought it was a success.
“My favorite part was probably seeing the staff get just as excited about prom as I was,” Beautz said. “A lot of work went into the planning, and I was just happy to see my staff had a great time.”