Taking place on one of the hottest days of the year to date, the second annual Spring Carnival saw over 200 students come together in the quad for a mix of games, music, giveaways and snow cones.
Organized and operated by the Resident Hall Association (RHA), Spring Carnival is one of the organization’s biggest events of the year, though it still remains smaller in scale than the annual Casino Night, typically held in the Campion Ballroom during winter quarter.
Anabella Vucci, a third-year public affairs and women & gender studies major, is the president of RHA and came up with the original idea for a Spring Carnival last year.
“We have a lot of leeway in the events that we do, we have legacy events, like Casino Night, but I wanted to do something that was new,” Vucci said, discussing her inspiration. “We really wanted to host an event that collaborated with other associations on campus. Often, as our own entities, we can be isolated from one another.”
At the heart of the Spring Carnival are the clubs and organizations that sign up to operate their booths. This year, nearly a dozen clubs could be seen under tents around the perimeter of the quad. The Spectator even had its own booth, hosting a crossword competition, while next door the Student Events and Activities Council was doing trivia. If one got five questions correct in under 45 seconds, they would have a chance to spin a wheel to win a range of prizes, including Owala water bottles, Jellycats and Legos.
Student Government of Seattle University was also neighboring, having a table adorned with a variety of Squishmallows that students could win by attempting to pop balloons by throwing darts.
Encouraged to visit and interact with as many different booths as they could, students were given punch cards when checking in. For each booth they visited, they would receive one punch, and if they won or participated in the activity on offer, they would get another. These punches could then be exchanged for raffle entries for prizes ranging from a spike ball set to Girl in Red concert tickets.
Solana Dicus Breen, a third-year environmental studies and Spanish double major, is the president of Stoke, an outdoor club that hosted their own booth at the carnival.
Not an acronym for anything, Stoke is just a word Dicus Breen’s club associates with an energy for the outdoors. Hosting hikes, bonfires and camping trips, Stoke is open to any student on campus.
Having hosted a booth at the carnival last year, Dicus Breen explained that they kept the same format for this year’s event, offering a “stump”-based game. This year that meant tossing mini carabiners at a sizable tree stump packed with nails.
When asked about why they decided to set up a booth at the carnival, Dicus Breen explained that there were elements of publicizing as well as just wanting to have fun.
“It was a good opportunity for people to get to know who we are, for us to engage with other clubs, and people really enjoyed our game last year so we were down to do it again,” Dicus Breen said, estimating that more than 100 people visited their booth during the carnival.
The second go around for many of the clubs who participated, as well as for RHA hosting,
the foundation laid by last year’s carnival meant that putting this year’s event together was both a delight and much simpler for those in charge.
Kayla Downing, a third-year political science major, is this year’s new director of programming at RHA, taking over for Vucci. She did not have any major changes to make being in charge of this year’s carnival.
“Since RHA operates off of so many legacy events, if there are any changes to be made, they are usually pretty small,” Downing said.
In terms of how the event was organized, Downing explained that a number of clubs were reached out to and vetted before the event, but none were turned away from the chance to host a booth. Also in charge of the raffle prize selection, Downing said that she crowdsourced from friends and colleagues, while also keeping a similar structure to the previous year.
In line with the larger mission of RHA—to build community for those at Seattle U—according to Vucci, the Spring Carnival is about helping students make connections, as well as simply have fun.
“It’s one thing to know that you are a student at SU and that there are other students, but it’s another to see everyone in community with one another,” Vucci concluded.
From carabiner and dart throwing to piña colada-flavored snow cones, the Spring Carnival was an opportunity for Redhawks to enjoy the sun and spend time with one another.
