Block Party Alternative Drawing Bigger Crowds
While boozy gatherings will abound downtown Saturday, a different kind of celebration will commence on Upper Campus, one that lacks alcohol, but offers students the chance to take a white-knuckle ride along a zipline through the woods, become life-sized pieces to game boards, and relieve some stress with pet therapy with the 6th annual Springfest.
The alcohol-free alternative has been growing in popularity. Just 333 people turned out the first year, in 2011. Last year, there were 1,451. This year, organizers hope to attract more than 1,500. The event is usually made up of Bloomsburg University students, but students are able to bring some family members or friends.
Block Party Insider reporters Stephanie Brito and Kelsie Johnston sat down with Springfest Chair George Kinzel to talk about the event’s history and what’s planned for this year.
“We wanted to identify ways to provide students alternative options to engage in the end of year celebration. Basically a more healthy and positive [experience] and give more of a positive impression to the town to improve town relations essentially. So this gave us an opportunity to do a whole assessment of students and see what they wanted to do at that weekend as an option.”
This year’s Springfest will start on Friday, April 15 beginning at 6 p.m. with the Freedom Carnival, which features carnival concessions. They will always be holding a ‘Merica contest to see who is the most patriotic following with a showing of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and a taco cart to end the night at 11 p.m.
On Saturday Springfest will be starting off with the Rockwall and zip lining at 10 a.m. At 11:30 registration begins where students will be able to receive free t-shirts and tickets for food. After registration, students will be able to engage in several activities such as activity tables, tie dye, life-sized board games and so much more.
To see the full schedule and to find out more about this year’s upcoming Springfest visit the official website at http://reslife.bloomu.edu/springfest/
Springfest is run by a number of organizations such as, athletics, CGA. CLE, the DAWN office, living and learning communities, program board, QUEST, rec center, res life, and WBUQ.
“Originally we had a committee of different departments that were involved including residence life, community government association, athletics, rec center and the dawn office.”
Any student is able to volunteer and are able to run all the stations, the concessions, the activities, the registration, the QUEST, etc. All a student would simply have to do is go onto Huskysync and sign up in the Springfest portal. When signed up to volunteer a student is able to receive community service hours and a free staff t-shirt.
This article originally appeared on BlockPartyInsider.wordpress.com, a project for Mass Communications’ Spring 2016 Journalism Workshop. You can view all of the workshop’s work there.
