After four years, the Mausoleum Party — Stanford’s most irreverent dead tradition — will finally rise tomorrow night.

“The idea of partying at the Mausoleum was slightly morbid,” said 2003 graduate Caroline Tsay. “But I remember it as a celebration in memory of the founders, who would want us to enjoy ourselves anyway.”

While older Stanford alumni describe it as a memorable costumed tribute to the University’s founders and current students are overjoyed about the impending resurrection, members of the Class of 2006 may wonder, “Why now?” Last year’s seniors were the first and only class to never experience the popular Halloween tradition.

The simple answer? Student leaders have finally gotten their acts together.

In 2001, the Stanford Alumni Association (SAA), which had sponsored the party since 1983, gave students notice: that year’s Mausoleum Party would be the last receiving SAA funding.

According to Victor Madrigal, SAA’s director of student programming, the decision stemmed from a variety of reasons, including a change in the SAA’s priorities.

Over the years, Madrigal said, student interest in planning the party had fallen, leaving more and more of the burden to the Alumni Association. Furthermore, the Mausoleum grounds — dark and difficult to work with — had always been a safety concern, he explained.

So when the SAA decided to shy away from student outreach efforts like campus parties to focus more on student-alumni networking programs, the Mausoleum Party, which had long become a liability to the Alumni Association, was left for dead.

However, while the SAA no longer wanted the responsibility, they did not want to see an end to the tradition either.

“Since 2001, SAA has continued to provide advising support and information to those student groups that have attempted to organize the events,” Madrigal said. “Ultimately, this is a Stanford tradition that is best served if organized and hosted by students.”

The Alumni Association expected students to step up to the plate, but it is a challenge student groups did not seriously take up until last year, when ASSU presidents Melanie Kannokada and Aneto Okonkwo promised to revive the party.

The newly elected presidents and cabinet started planning at the beginning of the school year. But as it turned out, the Mausoleum Party was too big, too complicated and too notorious to pull off in one month — especially by ASSU members who were still trying to get a grasp of their new jobs.

“To pull off something on the scale of Mausoleum Party, there are an awful lot of parties involved, including the ASSU, Stanford students who we see as our customers, the Department of Public Safety and the administration,” said 2006 graduate David Sanford, the ASSU’s chair for social life last year. “When not every group is on board, it is extremely difficult.”

The University suggested the ASSU should, in the future, restructure event planning to accommodate the Mausoleum Party and figure out early on how to delegate the responsibilities.

Student Affairs Office Director Nanci Howe, who has overseen the event planning since last year, said last year’s planning committee did not anticipate the unique challenges an unusual venue like the Mausoleum would pose. The location requires organizers to protect both the historic crypt and neighboring sites like the Cactus Garden.

The 2005 Mausoleum Party committee ran into wall after wall of similar issues — scrambling to secure funding, gain approval from Public Safety and, most importantly, choose a date for the party.

After four years of inactivity, new traditions like the Graduate Student Halloween Party and the trip to Castro Street had usurped the place of the Mausoleum Party. According to Howe, one date the committee chose last year clashed with the Frosh Formal, which provoked objections from New Student Orientation planners and the dean of freshmen.

“The date of the party was what essentially killed it,” said junior Jessica Stanley, who worked on the project last year and now serves as its ASSU point person. “Because planning began so late — about a month before the event was set to happen — there were conflicts on every date we were looking at.”

In the end, Sanford’s committee and Stanford administrators jointly decided to postpone the Mausoleum Party another year. Instead of throwing it together at the last minute, the committee wanted to make sure the Mausoleum Party was permanently re-established..

“We felt like it was more important that we plan the party well so that it continues for years after than just to do a half-assed job,” Sanford said.

Thus, in a continuing game of Hot Potato, the 2005 ASSU executives handed off the information they put together for the defunct Mausoleum Party to the 2006 ASSU leadership — and got lucky. This year’s presidents, seniors Elizabeth Heng and Lauren Graham, made it a priority to reinstate the party and started planning early, as Sanford had suggested.

“In large part, [the Mausoleum Party’s] revival is due to the foresight of Liz Heng,” said Junior Class President Brett Hammon, another one of the event planners. “She’s been putting all the boring logistics in place since the day she was elected. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it.”

During the summer, Heng persuaded The President’s Fund to help sponsor the Mausoleum Party, promising to bring together many campus programming groups in a united and organized effort to revive the uniquely Stanford tradition.

After working out security and logistical details with the Palo Alto Police Department and the Committee on Public Events, the ASSU entrusted the finishing touches — food, decorations, and advertising — to Hammon and the other junior class presidents.

And so the Mausoleum Party is on. But is it here to stay?

“That depends,” Howe said, “on what happens this year.”

The Student Affairs Office would have to re-evaluate the party in the days and weeks after the fact. Any damage to the site or noise complaints might doom the tradition again.

Hammon, however, expressed optimism.

“People should be in costume,” he said. “People should not be belligerently drunk. And people should have a lot of fun. If those three conditions are met, then I can almost guarantee the Mausoleum Party’s continuous existence.”

— With reporting by Niraj Sheth