There is still plenty of fun to be had on Virginia Wesleyan campus despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Student Activities, working through Off the Hook, hosted Grocery Bingo last week on Tuesday, Oct. 6, which was open to the entire campus to attend. Students were welcomed with the request that masks were to be worn at all times and that people follow the proper rules instituted by administration.
The event took place in the largest space possible on campus, Town Bank Arena, and was organized to keep students safe while still remaining fun and enjoyable for the student body.
Grocery Bingo is a yearly event at Virginia Wesleyan where students have the opportunity to win food, toiletries and other household goods by playing bingo. Even though the event is put on yearly, if not multiple times a year, it had to be slightly modified for the current COVID-19 situation.
“The only change we had to implement luckily was social distancing,” said Head of Student Activities Sarah Guzzo. Students were required to spread out among the arena bleachers with at least two seats in between them to allow for proper social distancing. The event was “easy enough to put on,” Guzzo said.
All participants were confined to their own seats, with not a large amount of moving around that needed to take place. To make the event even more competitive and suspenseful for participants, specialty patterns had to be met in order to win a prize.
The amount of people that came out to the event was roughly seventy to eighty students, which was about the same amount of people who had attended the event the prior year. Many of the students at the event were coming for their very first time, even though a majority of them had been attending the university for a number of years.
COVID-19 has indirectly helped bring awareness to campus activities and events. “Students crave, or are craving that social interaction that they can’t necessarily have anymore [due to COVID-19 restrictions]” Guzzo said. She hopes to host more events like this one to get the campus community interacting socially again while, at the same time, maintaining safety and adhering to the university and CDC guidelines.
Off the Hook, previously known as WAC (Wesleyan Activity Committee), is looking to host as many COVID-19 safe events they can this semester to keep campus community active and involved.
Off the Hook is trying to host as many in person and online events as possible this semester. From future Grocery Bingo events, like the one going to take place on Oct. 26, to weekly Kahoots about varying topics that are engaging to students, Student Activities and Off the Hook are using every resource to make sure that campus not only feels like home, but to also ensure that it is, indeed, a great day to be a Marlin.
By Robert Solomon
rlsolomon@vwu.edu
