Raymond Baccari
Editor-in-Chief
This year’s Student Activities Day signals one clear takeaway: Student life at RIC is back. The 2021 school year was plagued by COVID restrictions that really affected student life on campus. But this year’s Student Activities Day looked completely different than last year’s, and signaled better days ahead for the RIC community.
“This [year’s Student Activities Day] was amazing. Last year, I think with COVID and us being pushed back a couple weeks it wasn’t as big of a turnout. And I think students might have been a little hesitant to even come out with COVID being still kind of a big thing,” said Casey Smith, RIC Alumna ‘18 and Interim Program Coordinator for Student Activities. “I am just overwhelmed with emotion. This is my first truly big event with student organizations especially. So I think it went so well, I’m so happy. The feedback so far from campus partners, administration and even just the students have been great.”
Smith said “robust” when asked if she could use one word to describe this event. She also raised attention to how an event like this could help with student retention.
The turnout was almost double, if not triple of last year’s event. This year’s Student Activities Day checked off all the boxes: nice weather, ice cream at every table with toppings, every organization’s table full of interested students, music blasting and more.
It wasn’t just Smith who had that feeling of joy to see student life thriving once again. Students also shared similar thoughts about the event.
“I feel like this is the first year where everyone’s so together, and there is more [of] a big population to be able to congregate together because COVID is more under control now. And this is everyone’s full first semester back with [less] virtual learning – so definitely more successful,” said junior Maddy Waterman.
“Student life is back on campus. It is back in full. We are back from COVID, it’s really good to see everybody out here having fun. It gives me really good hopes for this year,” SCG President Matthew Thureson said.
From a visual standpoint, the energy at every table and by students happy to be on campus that day were present. Each student organization having ice cream at their table and unique toppings also got quite the positive feedback.
Smith is already planning for next year’s Student Activities Day. She told The Anchor one thing for sure is there will be more ice cream.
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