On a Friday night at 10:30 p.m., the word “pre-game” may come to mind as an apt way of describing what most of campus is up to.

But in the Village C Alumni Lounge this past Friday, the pre-game has long since given way to heated one-on-one competition as the walls reverberate with the sound of pingpong and lively chatter. Meanwhile, around 25 students relaxing on velvet blue couches and colorful armchairs in the lounge face off in a trivia tournament for $75 gift cards.

Across campus in the Leavey Center’s Bulldog Alley, over 200* students are dancing the night away to the electronic music beats of Dan Deacon, while a small gathering watches Transformers in the recently renovated Nevils community room.

All of these seemingly disjointed events have something in common — they are sponsored by “What’s After Dark,” a new, late-night program run by the Center for Student Programs meant to offers students social alternatives to liquor-laden campus parties on weekend nights between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m.

Tanesha Stewart, assistant director of student programs, coordinates “What’s After Dark” with the help of graduate assistants John-Michael McColl (MSFS ’09) and LaDonna Sales (GRD ’09) and a student programming committee. They began developing the program over the summer — the name, “What’s After Dark,” is a curious play on the school’s motto, “What Rocks,” according to Stewart — after a questionnaire found that students wanted expanded nighttime options.

Students “felt their only options were the house party and the culture of drinking,” Stewart says. “There weren’t alternatives to do, and if you think about it, the plurality of students aren’t of legal drinking age [and] … students may not necessarily want to leave campus late at night.”

The program is a combination of activities developed by the “What’s After Dark” leaders and events run by other student groups that the program co-sponsors. Most recently, the program co-sponsored events like Midnight Carnival, a casino night, the Midnight Madness After Show and a concert by rap artist Coolio in O’Donovan Hall.

Stewart says that the type and size of events that the program coordinates and co-sponsors run the gamut. The Coolio concert attracted about 1,000 students, although organizers capped the number of attendees there after weather concerns forced the event from its original location on the Multi-Sport Facility, which could have accommodated up to 2,000. Smaller events typically attract 40-50 students, Stewart says.

Student response so far has been mixed. Some have embraced the opportunity for assistance in planning events that might otherwise have foundered. Programs seeking co-sponsorship may apply online for aid of $500 or more, provided that their projected audience is more than 100 and that event planners can supply additional resources like volunteers and equipment.

Michelle Hess (COL ’08) and a group of other resident advisers from east campus recently organized the “Screen Under the Stars” film series and received funding from “What’s After Dark” after applying online for a co-sponsorship. Through co-sponsorship, groups like Hess’s can also receive additional publicity from “What’s After Dark” through an online event calendar.

“Programming has been really great to us,” Hess says. “We’ve really enjoyed working with them.”

She also attributed the success of the film series to the new program.

“It fits into [What’s After Dark’s] mission for providing alternative programs for students,” she said, “and it’s nice to do it in the east campus community because [it’s] right here as opposed to events that are happening on the other side of campus. It’s easier for students who live right here to come downstairs.”

But other students doubt that the program’s efforts will seriously alter student social behavior on weekends. Marion-Vincent Mempin (COL ’08) attended the “Club Lau” event at Lauinger Library and volunteered at the casino night and the Coolio concert. He says that the concert was well attended, but that the casino night attracted so few students that it hardly seemed worth the effort.

“I don’t think it deters people from drinking,” he says.

McColl, the assessment specialist for the program, attends the events each weekend and surveys students for their reactions. Through his data collection, McColl uses the information to find out how the program is doing among students, what types of students attend and what students would be doing otherwise, he says.

“The whole idea is to make sure we’re listening to what people want and are interested in and what they’d like to see [and] to make it tailored to Georgetown students,” McColl says.

So far, McColl says the surveys have shown a positive student response to the program, and a thirst for more concerts and game nights.

Eric Wind (SFS ’09) and Dan Bingham-Pankratz (SFS ’08) are among those students who have reacted favorably to the university’s push for alternative programming. The two won the trivia game hosted by “What’s After Dark.” Wind said he came to the event because he had also won the first trivia night in early September.

Bingham-Pankratz appraised the university’s effort to offer more activities for students, but noted that there was potential for more events with even wider appeal.

“They could have more stuff at Yates and have tournaments there,” he says.

Although “What’s After Dark” is still in the beginning stages, Stewart has broad plans for the program’s future. “It helps students in the fact that we’re trying to create more innovative, consistent programs and we also try to create larger programs,” she says.

McColl elaborated on some of the goals for next year, and said that the program would be planning future concerts, though it had not chosen any particular artists to perform.

“[There’s] ‘Thinkfast,’ a game show that involves a big production crew that will set up, people will have buzzers and they will be divided into teams,” he says. “We already have people signed up for teams even though it’s weeks away.”

Events co-sponsored for later this week include a viewing of 1408, as part of the Midnight Visions Movie series tonight at midnight in Bunn Intercultural Center Auditorium.

— Hoya Staff Writer Stephen Santulli contributed to this story.

*The article "Ping Pong or Beer Pong? 'What's After Dark' May Sway Your Choice" (THE HOYA, Nov. 9, 2007, G9) misrepresented the number of students who attended the Dan Deacon concert in Bulldog Alley on Nov. 2. Although the article said that over 50 students attended the concert, WGTB reported that 234 tickets were sold for the event.