On the Fire level of downtown Baltimore's Club One PHOTO BY HPS/WILL KIRK

By Greg Rienzi
The Gazette

Put some School of Engineering graduate students on the Air level and their Public Health counterparts on Water, and it sounds like you have the makings of a jim-dandy research project. Toss in 250 bottles of wine, hors d'oeuvres, music and matchmaking games and, well, now you're talking about one smart party.

On Tuesday, Feb. 10, nearly 300 JHU graduate students snubbed the books for an evening and swigged the nightlife — and a bevy of Bordeaux wines — at downtown Baltimore's four-level, element-themed Club One. The School of Medicine's Graduate Student Association and the Homewood Schools' Graduate Representative Organization hosted the year's gold-medal social affair, Valentine's Day Slow Dating with Bordeaux — the first such U.S. university event sponsored by the Bordeaux wine-makers' cooperative.

Slow dating? Think of it as a passive alternative to speed dating. Everyone who entered the club was presented with a partial phrase on a slip of paper and a "personality" Cupid sticker, which sported phrases ranging from "I'm too old for this" to "How U doin'?" The student's mission, should he or she wish to accept it, was to find the owner of the other half of the phrase or a matching personality. For couples, "I'm taken" stickers were also available.

Ivan Litvinov, vice president of the GSA and chair of the group's social committee, said the main ambition for the evening was to create a fun event that brought together graduate students from the various schools on the Homewood and East Baltimore campuses.

"We want them to feel like [Hopkins] is a great place to be, not just academically speaking," said Litvinov, a School of Medicine student. "People in other schools, and definitely on other campuses, generally don't talk to one another. We wanted to make them feel like they are truly part of one big university system."

For convenience and safety's sake, shuttle buses ran throughout the night between Club One and the two campuses.

The graduate student organizations plan to host another intercampus social event in April, during National Graduate and Professional Student Appreciation Week. For details on the two groups' upcoming events, go to www.hopkinsmedicine.org/gsa and www.jhu.edu/~gradro.

Paolo Serafini shows off his personalities.
PHOTO BY HPS/WILL KIRK
 

Judith Hagedorn and Roberto Rocchi
PHOTO BY HPS/WILL KIRK
 

Alina Forak, Erik Newton and Khristina Caballero
PHOTO BY HPS/WILL KIRK
 

Jenn Roth, Mary Berk, Crystal l'Hote, Allison Surtees,
Mike Nilles and Heather Reeves
PHOTO BY HPS/WILL KIRK
 

John Heller, Victoria Rossi, Weston Williams and Jessica Roberts
PHOTO BY HPS/WILL KIRK
 

Victor Gruev, Francesca Ricci and Max Pacifico
PHOTO BY HPS/WILL KIRK
 

Christia Hanigan, Kate Orosz, Megan Keefe, Abby Davidson
and Mike Taderev
PHOTO BY HPS/WILL KIRK
 

Hernan Lorenzi, Deepali Tukaye and her winnings
PHOTO BY HPS/WILL KIRK
 

Christian Villenas, Carlo Rago and April Duangrat
PHOTO BY HPS/WILL KIRK
 

Aaron Curry, Angela Alexander, Gwen Windham and Mike Griswold
PHOTO BY HPS/WILL KIRK
 

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