There were floodlights in the parking lot, throngs of college students in the arena seats, and animated-film snippets playing on the Jumbotrons. It was the Sunday night before Presidents’ Day at Boston College’s Silvio O. Conte Forum. And the top-secret theme for the 30th anniversary of Middlemarch, BC’s highly anticipated costume ball slated to take place last Friday night, had just been revealed: Disney.

Some students seemed disappointed — a group of guys groused about not being able to dress like Lord of the Rings characters — but others were psyched. " I want to go as Ariel, so I can be cute, " said a blonde girl in a fuzzy pink sweater as footage from Beauty and the Beast flashed onscreen.

" I want to go as the Epcot Center globe, " said a nearby boy who didn’t seem to care about being cute.

Middlemarch is a decades-old tradition at Boston College, an elaborate student-run theme party with a budget exceeding $30,000. Held at BC’s O’Connell House, a special-activities manse seated on Upper Campus, undergraduate volunteers and Student Union staff managers typically spend about a month transforming the mansion into scenes inspired by a central theme. Last year, the motif was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, so students constructed a 20-foot chocolate cascade on the premises. A few years back, the theme was Titanic — helpers rigged slanted floors to simulate what passengers must’ve felt on the sinking ship.

But this year, Middlemarch didn’t happen. A couple of weeks ago, Chris Darcy, the assistant dean for student development who’d been overseeing the gala’s progress realized that in the wake of the West Warwick fire, there’d be careful scrutiny of the event’s fire safety. Already, plastic vines and papier-mâché leaves had been designed to resemble the forest in The Jungle Book, while nylon draperies imitated the underwater world of The Little Mermaid. So in conjunction with the school’s Facility Services Department and Office of Environmental Health and Safety, Darcy invited the Newton Fire Department to inspect the more-than-halfway-complete decorations. " They told us there was absolutely no way. The looks on their faces — there was a captain and two lieutenants — they were like, ‘There is just no way we can allow this event to go on in here.’ "

Many of the materials used to convert the premises into fantasyland weren’t fire retardant. " We're talking about bed sheets, cottons, nylons, wood, Styrofoam, " explains Darcy. And since the building dates back to the turn of the 20th century, there’s no sprinkler system. " That really compounded the problems. " Much to the dismay of the student body, the administration cancelled the festivities — but just for this year. " A lot of people are concerned that Middlemarch has died and that's certainly the farthest thing from the truth, " says Darcy. " We're just looking to be as safe as possible. "

Undoubtedly, the decision was a consequence of the West Warwick tragedy. " If that hadn't happened, " Darcy admits, " we probably would've said, ‘Move this, fix this, take this covering off here.’ But that has changed the playing field. "