Of the many school-wide events that are occurring this October, the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) is set to host a student festival.
The festival will be held from 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Oct. 11th at the GATA Fountain. A variety of festivities will be present, such as free Kona Ice, music, an inflatable obstacle course and booths where students can interact with the different departments at ACU.
Departments that are participating include the Athletics, Engineering and Physics and Student Life departments, although Wildcats can expect to see appearances from other departments as well. Students may also look forward to participating in the activities each department will be operating.
“There’s really nothing to celebrate ACU’s culture in the daytime for students,” Ryan Bowman, director of OMA said. “We need to show off our campus to our campus. One of the things I’ve started to notice is that a lot of our students don’t normally know other departments. So what if we bring them to the students instead of sending the students to the departments?”
The idea to bring the departments to the students will be brought to fruition by the many booths that will be available. Each booth will house fun activities for students to participate in with the ultimate goal being to introduce students to departmental staff.
The heavy emphasis on students and staff interaction is no coincidence either. Bowman made it clear that the purpose of this event is to foster community and to celebrate all members of Wildcat Nation without the requirement of a special event.
“We just need some purple power around here and that’s what we want to bring, this purple power energy,” Bowman said. “You know, we just shouldn’t wait until a Saturday at two o’clock or six o’clock at a game. We celebrate it during the week because we can, we don’t need a special event. We want to celebrate ourselves because we can.”
In addition to serving as a celebration and community-building event, the festival maintains a third motive. The Student Festival is set to aim to encourage students throughout their college journey as well.
“What we want to do is kind of carve out just a little space for students, to celebrate our students while they’re on their journey to be great,” Bowman said. “This is just an encouragement push. This is just some vitamin P, vitamin purple. We want to give you some vitamin purple here, that’s all it is.”
