“I love to see them laugh,” said Keene State College student Kelly Welch, as the students dodged a giant inflatable spinning pole in the Student Center lawn this past Friday, September 7.
Through Student Involvement, the KSC After Hours Program held an Inflatable Madness night, featuring three inflatable jumparoos including a bungee run, wipeout, and dome defender, blue raspberry popcorn, and dance music.
Welch is a junior, studying elementary education and math education.
Haley Erdbrink / Equinox Staff: A KSC student prepares to bungee race his opponent at After Hours Inflatable Madness on the Student Center Lawn. Above right: After Hours setup table features white boards for the students.
She became part of the KSC After Hours program to become more involved and get students to enjoy their transition into campus.
She said, “I like seeing how happy they are and that they’re having fun on campus, especially late at night too.”
Junior and Health Science major, Chelsea Harris, is the Student Activities and Organizational Assistant who works along with Welch.
Harris helps oversee the After Hours program and plan the events.
Last weekend, the program held a glow light dance party at the student center. Harris explained her goal in these events.
“Overall, just to get kids out, do other things than just going out. There is other fun stuff on campus.”
Director of Student Involvement Jen Ferrell started this program two years ago.
Since then, Ferrell, Harris and Welch have tallied and surveyed what events students are interested in and gathered that information to plan for this upcoming year.
“We have a number of dances. Next week we have a carnival night. Ski ball and bumper cars [and] cotton candy” Ferrell said.
The carnival night will be September 14 from 10 to 2a.m at the student center..
There is a lot more to expect this fall for late night fun.
Ferrell said, “We have a game show, a comedy night, a poetry-spoken word coffeehouse night. Students will be able to perform and we’ll do coffee and hot chocolate and make it a cool kind of vibe. In October, we have a ghost hunter coming to campus.”
As the night continued, students braced the cold to wait in line to race their friends in the bungee run.“It’s just a fun thing to do with friends later at night when there really isn’t a lot going on. It’s really fun,” said Cam Gillies, a KSC junior. “It’s interesting to have different things going on all the time. This was one of the first I’ve been to and it was definitely worth coming to and I’ll definitely come to one in the future,” Gillies said regarding the After Hours programs.
It means a lot to first year student Mike Sheehy that KSC After Hours pursues programs like Inflatable Madness as an alternative to going out and drinking.
“It’s a lot of fun. I think it keeps a lot of kids out of trouble,” Sheehy said behind his horse mask that he wore to the program. “I put on the unicorn mask and it makes people happy,” Sheehy said.
And happy is absolutely what the students were that night. When informed about the bumper cars next Saturday, first years Brinn Mcguire and Madi Hall both said, “Oh my god we’re going to that!”
“It gives people another option for other people to bond with other students who don’t want to go out. I think it’s a lot of fun,”Mcguire said.
Kenzie Travers can be contacted at mtravers@keene-equinox.com