In September, Guilfordian readers were informed of an event idea called “Fall Fest.” The purpose of Fall Fest was to help build community between students and student organizations.
Yet the aspirations for what Fall Fest would be during the planning stages in September and what actually happened the weekend of Oct. 25 were different for a multitude of reasons.
Like most first-time events, planning and communication seemed to be major hurdles.
Erin Fox, director of student leadership and engagement, said that there was not an organizing committee. Student organizations were responsible for planning their own events.
“(Senior) Elijah DaCosta, (Inter-Club Council) chair, did try to communicate with organizations to put together some sort of combined schedule and assist groups with planning, but he received few and inconsistent responses,” Fox said.
The ambition that was felt at the initial planning meeting did not last. The members of student organizations have other events to plan, classes to go to and lives to live, so the exciting ideas for Fall Fest dwindled.
“The club reps may have seemed interested in the idea at the meeting, but, to me, there was obvious lack of initiative outside of that,” said a student who wishes to remain anonymous. “A good idea in theory, but in practice it fell apart … regardless, because the idea sounded good it got spread around and expectations were created for the event(s).”
Despite the challenges facing Fall Fest events, a few events were successfully carried out. Fancy Feet organized one such event, the barn dance.
Sophomore Mandy Lu, a member of the club, said that Fancy Feet received a lot of help from other clubs and organizations, but Lu did not feel like the barn dance was a part of a bigger event on campus. Lu said that Fancy Feet would have had the barn dance even if Fall Fest had never been planned.
Fancy Feet needed help from other clubs to carry through the event, but they contacted the organizations on their own and not through Fall Fest.
“We were successful because we had a strong leadership team and because we started planning the event early,” said Lu.
In an email correspondence, DaCosta said that Fall Fest did not live up to the hype that was created for it. According to DaCosta, it was not a failure and the goal of Fall Fest was not to create new events for the weekend, but to bring cohesion to events that would happen over that specific weekend.
“A lot of people were really interested in just seeing this massive thing happening, but not many people wanted to commit the time it takes to make a great event happen,” DaCosta said.
The anonymous student said, “It’s difficult to plan something with a lot of parts, and, in this case, a lot of clubs.”
Fox sees the possibility of this being a learning experience.
“My hope is that in the future, should we want to make this an annual event, that student leaders would take initiative for collaboration and planning efforts,” said Fox.