KSC students eagerly waited in two separate lines outside the Mabel Brown Room (MBR) on April 6, as the return of Feminist Collective’s Sex Toy Bingo was upon them.
Following the breakout success of last year’s Sex Toy Bingo, Feminist Collective (FemCo) felt it necessary to switch to a larger venue.
“We booked the Mabel Brown Room because we said, ‘Hey, that’s a good space, and surely there won’t be overflow,’ because [in 2022] there were still COVID protocols and you could only have so many people in a space,” FemCo treasurer Alexandra Soucy said.
The organization’s 2022 event took place in the Night Owl Café and saw a sizable line of students awaiting admission. The event itself consists of standard rounds of bingo, but winners of each round are awarded a sex toy. FemCo co-president senior Stefne Ricci explained its success. “I think number one, it’s silly, it is a little goofy… but it’s also just something fun to do, and also a little different.”
Soucy mentioned that the event is beneficial to boosting FemCo’s visibility on campus. “Last year, the meeting directly after Sex Toy Bingo was crazy, there were so many people there,” she said.
The event mandated that attendees be 18 years of age or older, and only allowed KSC students to claim a prize. Shortly after the event’s slated start time of 7 p.m., members of FemCo stood outside the doorway of the MBR checking students’ identifications before the games began.
Among the line of students was senior Izzy Lanzlinger, who voiced her excitement about the event. “I’m looking forward to hanging out with my friends, and possibly winning a sex toy,” she said. Lanzlinger said she heard about the event from friends in FemCo, and said she would like to see similar events in the future. “I think that having events that promote sex positivity is a good thing,” Lanzlinger said.
First-year Nicholas Wyman said he found the event from posters on campus. Wyman expressed his anticipation, “[I’m looking forward to] the bingo, being with my friends, and the sex toys,” he said.
After the lines had dwindled and students poured into the Mabel Brown Room, it was clear that the event’s second year was a hit. The roundtables of the second floor were full to capacity, as well as the third floor bleachers. Some groups of students had no choice but to sit on the floor after all the traditional seating had been taken.
“We had way more people than we thought we’d even get tonight,” co-president senior Alyssa Hamilton remarked to the crowd before the event’s kickoff.
Placed on top of the roundtables in the MBR were “resource menus” which directed students to various organization’s of importance to FemCo, including Planned Parenthood of Keene and the Monadnock Center for Violence Prevention (MCVP). There were also tables on the first floor of the Student Center giving out more information.
“We really wanted this event, as fun as it was, to also be educational, because that’s really what we want as a feminist organization, is to raise awareness for different issues,” Ricci said.
In the future, Ricci hopes to increase the organization’s presence on campus beyond Sex Toy Bingo. “We’ve talked about wanting to do more tables where we give out Plan B, but at our meetings we’re going to be doing a presentation night, we’re going to be doing a final wrap-up dinner, and those kinds of things,” Ricci said.
FemCo meets on Thursdays weekly in Science Center 129.
Nathan Hope can be contacted at
nhope@kscequinox.com
