Matt AndrewThis past week marked the first annual SGA Spirit Week, a week planned to be full of school spirited activities and support for the Bobcats.
The week began with the Bobcat Bash on Sunday and progressed with Appreciation Day, Pro Sports Day, Organizations Day, Blue and Gold Day, Athletics Day and ended with the SPB Spring Concert on Saturday evening.
According to Jenna Palm, chairwoman of the Spirit Week Committee, Spirit Week has been received better than expected.
“Maria Goloubenko, the other chair of the Spirit Week Committee and I were a little nervous that the students wouldn’t want to get involved in the events, but luckily we were wrong,” Palm said. “Students seem to be interested in the events we have put on.”
Katelynn Rourke, Vice President of Public Relations for SGA, agreed with Palm.
“Every event has had a larger turnout than we expected,” she said. “At the Organizations Food Feast we probably had about 600-700 people.”
Rourke said that she was very pleased with the reception of Spirit Week, as it was a new tradition at Quinnipiac.
“We’ve all been really excited about it from the beginning, so we were hoping it would all go as we envisioned and so far it has,” Rourke said.
While turnout to specific events was high, students did not respond as strongly to specifically themed days, such as Pro Sports Day and Blue and Gold Day.
Rourke said that she does not know if students were simply unaware of the themes but that they are taking it “one step at a time” to get as much of the student body as possible involved.
Palm had a different spin regarding the turnout the themed days brought.
“A lot of people showed up to the Bobcat Bash on Sunday and showed off their dancing skills. Staff members were very grateful for the Appreciation Reception on Monday and the “Buy-a-Bobcat decals” sold out fast. On Professional Sports Team Day, many people attended the Pro-Sports Tailgate in the café and bought raffle tickets for gift baskets filled with memorabilia from their favorite sports teams.On Blue and Gold Day, Step to Perfection, Dance Fusion and the cheerleaders did a great job performing at Bobcat Tailgate in the TD Banknorth Sports Center,” Palm said.
As far as specific events, Rourke and Palm both agree that the Organizations Food Feast was the most popular event of the week.
According to Palm about 24 different organizations made food for the fair in support of Spirit Week. Among them were the sororities and fraternities, the Asian Pacific-Islander Student Association (APSA), Latino Cultural Society, Student Against Destructive Decisions (SADD), and AMICI, just to name a few. Each organization had their members serving all types of food, including Chinese food, Wings from Hamden, brownies, cupcakes, cookies, meatball subs, chocolate fondue and Dunkin Donuts. Mocktails were also served to help wash everything down.
One reason for the success of the food fair was the fact that everything was free.
According to Palm, the students especially enjoyed the events with the free food. Another reason was the fact that it took place from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., the primary hours for dinner. However, a lot of the food ran out after a very short time. APSA served eggrolls and dumplings and had to pack up after 15 minutes because they ran out and did not have enough money in their budget to order more.
The overwhelming popularity of the food feast surpassed the committee’s expectations, as they had expected the Bobcat Tailgate at the TD Banknorth Sports Arena Thursday to be the event with the biggest turnout.
“I thought that the Bobcat Tailgate would be more popular,” Palm said “This was the first student event we were able to hold at TD Banknorth so it was really exciting. A lot of people showed up after the Spirit Performances were over, but they got to stick around for Sophomore Madness ’70s night’ at the basketball game.”
The members of SGA can’t complain about the way the events turned out.
“I don’t think SGA really knew what to expect. Since Quinnipiac has never had a Spirit Week before, we had nothing to compare it to. I think that the members of SGA are very happy with the outcome. We are happy that we could bring a tradition like this to campus,” Palm said.
The events of spirit week could not have been put together without outside help.
“We had an enormous amount of help from the Spirit Week Committee, Programming Committee, Public Relations Committee, Chartwells, Facilities, and many others,” Palm said.
When asked how they would make Spirit Week different next year based on this year’s experience, Palm said, “Next year, I would like to get more organizations involved in the planning of Spirit Week. This year, the Spirit Week Committee received help from SPB, RHC, and SAAC and I think it would be great to get even more input. The more people we have, the more ideas we will get. We just want to make events that the whole campus can get excited about. I would also like to get the planning done earlier so we can spend more time on promotions.”
