On Thursday, Oct. 27, the Swifties of Oakland University hosted “Midnights Mayhem With Us” to celebrate the release of Taylor Swift’s tenth album “Midnights.”

The listening party marked the first event for the group — started by President Chiara Nava — after Swift’s surprise announcement of “Midnights” presented the perfect opportunity for the club’s inaugural event.

Nava originally started the Instagram account @swiftisofoaku about a year ago after noticing the popular wave of other college Swiftie-dedicated accounts taking off.

“As [the account] got a lot of interaction, I thought, ‘what if we just made this a club?’ because people were messaging and saying ‘This would be so fun! I want to meet other people who like this!’” Nava said.

Right away, Nava was surprised at how many people followed the account and began joining the club on GrizzOrgs, prompting her and fellow board members to create a GroupMe for club members to interact. 

Lots of Swift-centric TikToks are sent in that GroupMe, discussing theories about songs and music videos and keeping track of the endless easter eggs that Swift is known to incorporate into her work as a special gift to fans.

Overall, the goal of this specific event was to bring that sense of online community to the real world of a college campus.

“[The goal of this event was to] build a bigger sense of community,” Nava said. “It’s not just about the artist or the music — not everyone loves [Taylor Swift] or to the same degree — I think it’s just about letting everyone know they can come hang out at a fun place to meet people.”

And build a bigger sense of community they did. From people arriving in exact recreations of iconic music video looks of Swift’s to dressing up as her cats, the Swifties showed up. Someone even donned a trash bag and cruised around on a scooter in reference to Swift’s infamous feud with Scooter Braun.

As for the future of the Swifties of OU, they already have their second event planned for Nov. 15th in the Habitat, where they are going to screen Swift-centered media and concert films alike.

The club is also hoping to incorporate smaller events in the future, like coffee chats, as we enter the winter months, where people can meet up to study with Taylor Swift as their soundtrack.

You can follow the Swifties of Oakland University on Instagram at @swiftiesofoaku to keep up to date with future updates and events, and you can join the club on GrizzOrgs at “Swifties of Oakland University.”