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Mai Fete

Mai Fete

Carleton's annual "Mai Fete" dance pageants, beginning before WWI, reached the height of their popularity in the '20s and '30s. The elaborately orchestrated pageants, accompanying the coronation of a May Queen selected by the College's women students, regularly drew thousands of spectators to the hillsides overlooking the island stage on lower Lyman Lakes. Most women on campus took part in the pageants in one way or another, and one reviewer termed it "the most beautiful and impressive event of its kind in the Northwest." Traditional-style May pageants continued through the '50s, but eventually yielded to changing tastes and are replaced, first by a weekend arts festival and then by an annual concert of student bands.

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