Despite a rainy morning, good vibes and sunshine raised the spirits of Keene State College students the afternoon of Thursday, May 1 at the spring carnival.
The carnival was put on by KSC Student Government and spread down Appian Way with rides, food, music and fun available to everyone that attended.
Assistant Vice President of Student Affairs, Paul Striffolino, noted, “We’ve been having a spring carnival since 2004, this is our tenth year.” Striffolino said, “This time of year in particular, it’s a great way to bring people together before they go home and back to their summer jobs. It really builds a sense of community.”
Senior Student Body President Eric Grady explained, “In total this whole thing [the carnival] cost around thirty grand. The class of 2017 got a henna artist, the class of 2014 is doing a give-away and having an event at Scores Sports Bar & Grille. The class of 2016 is doing a “chalk talk” where you can go and just write things you like about the school. They’re also having backyard sports, like ladder ball and horseshoes.”
Karina Barriga Albring / Senior Reporter Emeritus:
KSC students pictured ride the carnival’s ride, The Round Up, on Thursday, May 1, during Student Government’s event.
Jessica French, student government events committee director of live entertainment said, “We’re having DJ Testa, The Mabel Brown Room [the band] and a few other popular student groups.”
French also said, “It’s a new company providing the rides this year, the other company had no availability.”
This new company is called Party Vision and is based out of Nashua, N.H., according to Jeffrey Bisset, a technician for the company.
Another technician for the company, Evans Desire, explained the process that the technicians go through during their events.
“We usually have a three-man team to set-up, with a two man team to operate the rides,” Desire said.
Many students found the carnival to be a welcoming distraction from the burden of final exams. As one of the last events of the year, many students felt it was a good way to end of the semester.
Sara Lambert, KSC junior said, “It lets people release the stress of finals,” when asked about the carnival. Sophomore Nicky Jadaszewski agreed and said, “Everyone has a lot of work and we pay a lot to go here so at the end of the year we all deserve something like this.” While waiting to climb the rock wall, sophomore Joseph Schiavone, noted, “It is nice that they do this for us and try to make people happy, because it is absolutely a stress-reliever during finals time and it gives people an excuse to get away from all of the paper work.” Teal Harrison-Hertz, also a sophomore waiting with Schiavone, said, “It’s a beautiful day for it [the carnival], we couldn’t have asked for better weather.”
However, with ideal weather on hand, some students were still skeptical about the carnival’s rides.
Freshman Brian O’Hara said, “The rides look rickety and sketchy, but I’m still going to ride them,” while waiting in line to ride the Scrambler.
KSC Student Government also made some major changes with the carnival.
This particular carnival, which closed at 10 p.m., was open later than it had ever been in its ten-year run. This allowed students to stay at the carnival later. “I stayed until around 9 p.m. and it was really cool, but I think they had more rides last year,” stated Sarah Anderson, sophomore. Anderson also mentioned, “The Round Up was my favorite ride.”Another change was that the carnival was also going to have a cash bar. However, according to junior Kenneth Hadley, member of student government, “The cash bar was canceled because student government thought it was going to rain so we put everything away.”
Student Body Representative Sean Ballard supplemented this and said, “The bar was going to be with the food, [but] because we decided to do the food inside, the bar got canceled. A lot of people were upset because they were looking forward to it.” With the bar canceled, students were still allowed the option of catered Chinese food throughout the dining commons.
Overall, students enjoyed the spring carnival. The Student Government and Party Vision had a large amount of clean-up to do after the event was over.“It took us [student government] around three hours to set up, probably five hours with the catering,” Ballard continued, “They [Party Vision] started breaking down the rides around 10 p.m. and finished much later than us. We [student government] finished around 11 p.m.”
Zachary Fournier can be contacted at zfournier@keene-equinox.com.
