The concept of going to a stranger’s house for dinner, with a dozen other strangers, is an extremely odd one to me.
Before coming to UCLA, it’s not a position I would have seen myself in.
Then I came to UCLA, where Dinner for 12 Strangers is not only an accepted event, but a staple in the college experience of many students. Alumni host dinners for students and faculty in Los Angeles, other parts of the country and around the world, as part of the Student Alumni Association program.
On Saturday, I attended one of these dinners – I’ve done Dinner for 12 Strangers once before, as a first year, but one of the “strangers” was my floormate, so we both had a safety net, which takes away some of the fun.
None of the students or faculty knew each other at my dinner this year, though, so I actually got to understand what it’s like to spend an evening with a group of people whose only common thread is UCLA.
The dinners are a way for alumni to stay connected to the university they love on a more personal level, and students get to meet alumni and network.
What I was more interested in, though, is the social experiment aspect of the dinners. If you’ve ever lived in a dorm, you’ve probably been in a situation where you didn’t know anyone. The difference there is that you have a year to get to know them, not just an evening; and there are just students, not a mix of students, alumni and faculty.
At the dinners, the entire purpose is to spend about four hours (that’s how long mine was) talking to people with whom you may have nothing in common. Some dinners are targeted toward specific interests, so conversation might be easier, but mine was not.
My dinner was hosted by two couples, and there were six students and one faculty member. Three of the four hosts graduated from UCLA in the ’60s. The two women, Karen Wagener and Linda Stagen, were close friends in college and still are today, and they’ve hosted multiple dinners together. This year, the 11 of us gathered at the Stagens’ Westwood home.
So technically speaking there were not 12 strangers, but I became best friends with the golden retriever, Finley, so I think he counts as the 12th.
I thought it might be difficult to find a similarity for all the guests to hook on to. Instead, all six of the students present, including me, had something very special in common, and it didn’t take very long to find it.
The first icebreaker the hosts used was to ask what our singular favorite moment at UCLA is. We had the same answer.
All the students, myself included, chose UCLA’s football victory over USC in November. We agreed that it was raining, and epic, and we were surrounded by friends, and those combined to create a magical moment. That led the hosts and the faculty member to talk about their own experiences with UCLA sports – Stagen and her husband have season tickets to football games, and the Wageners to basketball games.
Watching the friends banter and asking them about their lives after college made me a little less afraid to enter the real world.
Who knows, maybe 40 years from now, my friends and I will host strangers together in our homes.
If you have ideas for Kohli Calling, email Kohli at skohli@media.ucla.edu.