Spirit Week, held during the week of Jan. 31 to Feb. 4, was enjoyable for UR students.
“Spirit Week was both a success and a ton of fun,” President of the Freshman Class Council Greg Meditz said. “The most rewarding element is being able to see all of your hard work becoming something great and to see all the people enjoying the fruits of your work. I’m glad that so many people were able to come out and enjoy the events we put on.”
Spirit Week was introduced last year by the 2007 Class Council to get the students more enthusiastic about the WinterFest Weekend activities.
“The driving force behind Spirit Week is the UR students,” Meditz said. “It’s too often that I hear that there’s nothing to do or that there isn’t enough school spirit at UR. That’s why the 2007 Class Council began Spirit Week last year.”
Continuing, he said, “This year, the Freshman Class Council picked up Spirit Week so that this event may become an annual element for UR.”
Sponsored by the Freshman Class Council, the events were very popular, especially the Spirit Dinner, the free-hot-cocoa-and-chapstick event and bowling night.
“At one point Monday night [during Spirit Dinner], there were no available tables in Danforth and lines were out the door,” Council Business Manager Susan Barnish said.
“Thursday’s bowling was amazing – almost 200 people showed up,” she said. “This was much higher than expected. Also, the 500 chapsticks we ordered for Tuesday ran out at about 2:30 in the afternoon — they were a lot more popular than we had expected.”
The Council had been planning these events since the beginning of November, and the final budget totaled $3,000, according to Barnish.
“[A] lot of energy and work went into this,” Council Vice President Aditi Kadakia said. “The week before was nothing but every spare minute spent on Spirit Week. It took a lot of planning, but it paid off.”
While there were no major problems with the planning and organization of the events, the council encountered a few minor issues regarding publicity.
“The one thing that started off slowly was the hype about Spirit Week,” Meditz said. “There wasn’t a significant buzz surrounding the week, as I am told there was last year. But once the week came under way, the vibe picked up across campus and the events began to explode on the scene.”
Continuing, he said, “it was sometimes a little more difficult to access the upperclasses because the freshmen have the least amount of access to them.”
In the end, the problems were resolved, and the week was successful.
This is a tradition that is expected to continue.
“I think everything was a great experience,” Barnish said. “It was a busy but amazingly fun week”
Sridharan can be reached at asridharan@campustimes.org.
