By Kyra Palumbo
Every year since 2012, Western New England University has hosted an event known as “Lights Out.” Yes, it is what it sounds like — an event with no bright lights, but black light instead. What makes this event so large-scale is that it is when all four of the class councils — freshman, sophomore, junior and senior — collaborate to put on an event for all of campus to enjoy.
All of the councils contribute both financially and creatively which, of course, takes a lot of planning. Each council assigns a few people to take the lead in the planning and coordinate with the other councils so the process of planning is a little less overwhelming than having a zoom call with over 75 students sharing their ideas.
From a council member perspective, it was nice for all of the council members in different years to get to know each other a little. At an event this size, there had to be shifts to take care of setup, event control and execution as well as clean up.
This year with COVID-19 and all the restrictions that follow, this event looked a little different than years prior. The event was on Friday, February 5 in the Center for the Sciences and Pharmacy (CSP). To ensure social distancing, the event took place on all four floors of the CSP, each having a different activity or event.
I was outside on social distancing duty; however, I was able to ask my fellow council members and friends on other councils what they enjoyed about the event.
The big draw to the event for most was, of course, the Chick-Fil-A that was catered. Just imagine how hard it must have been to transport $1500 of yummy Chick-Fil-A sandwiches and not being able to eat them. I don’t think I could have done it. Anyway, after people ingested their sandwiches, there was more fun to be had.
There was a slime making station where you could make it any color you wanted. Along with slime, you were able to make your own ornaments and snow globes. These were very unique winter activities that most in attendance seemed to enjoy. A couple more activities consisted of ring toss, a hot chocolate station, and a minute-to-win-it game.
At all of the stations, there were opportunities to receive tickets to be put in a raffle to win prizes. Tickets were pretty easy to get your hands on — by simply participating in the various activities, you earned yourself tickets. This is a win-win situation in my eyes, since you got to make some cool things with your friends AND win cool prizes.
Some prizes included a limited edition ‘Lights Out’ t-shirt that only the council members received prior to those that spent their tickets on a t-shirt. For only a mere five tickets you could get a free t-shirt, and who doesn’t love a free shirt? Other prizes were a snowball maker, the Frozen movies, both one and two, a snow cone maker, a pair of AirPods, and even a speaker.
Keeping in mind that I was standing outside of the CSP and watching and counting people going into the event, I would say this was a very successful event for a Friday night. The line was nearly wrapped around the CSP to the Plymouth Residence Halls at a couple points in the night. Given the new circumstances that COVID-19 has put us in, social life has been hard to come by. I believe the Lights Out event gave students the chance to be social and something to fill their Friday night with, safely of course.
