Monday, June 2, 2008

Activity Fair brainstormage

We need to make a huge impression on the freshmen so they get excited about sustainability & community right off the bat. It should seem like having dinner with Jack from Sherwood is just as normal at Sewanee as  a frat party. 

Thus, I propose a massive GreenHouse Activity Fair table this August. Get email addresses & follow up with events right off the bat... we don't want to lose people to other groups or to (even worse) nothingness i.e. people sitting around doing nothing all freshmen year.

Ideas:
  • We could have produce from garden to eat. Did we plant any of those little cherry bite-sized tomatoes?
  • Oh. Even better - home made ice cream from Dr. Haskell's goats & ducks!!!
  • For that matter, a goat or chicken or two (this is the only time during the whole year when we will have access to the entire freshmen class)
  • Person jammin' on guitar or other suitable instrument
  • bicycle hooked up to something... (this may have to wait until later in the year; we could hook it up to a couple lightbulbs in front of the 'Clurg)
  • Make connections to everything that we do so that we draw in different types of people (parties-organic wine/beer, inequality issues & how we address them through service, books we read, whatever...)
  • And make it FANTASTICAL... i.e. the best Sewanee Activity fair booth EVER.
  • It should probably be interactive in some way if possible.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

In response to this and your other post about doing things during orientation-- I think it's definately a good idea to do things right away to get freshmen (and other students) interested. I'm not sure if we could get something on the orientation schedule (I mean, we can't compete with the shrimp boil or Dr Potter and Smith's music), but it might be a good idea to have a music jam or something at the beginning of the year (like the first weekend or something) and we can tell people about this at the activities fair.
And I'm not sure we could have a bicycle doing electric things by that time, but we might be able to get it to do something else-- like turn the crank of the ice cream maker

Elspeth said...

The best thing we could possibly have at the Activity Fair is have lots of us there. The more of us standing next to the table and talking with people passing by, the better.

I like the idea of people playing music. Last year the Natural History Society Table had a lot of bones, insects and birds that were a great way to initiate conversations. It'd be nice to make ice cream and have plants, a small worm or compost box, and serve food to eat (maybe tomatoes, salad greens, and small slices of bread).

We haven't done much of the service oriented activities before. Because we won't have photos or many stories to show for ourselves, I think it'd be good to organize garden planting or something with the CAC before the Activity Fair.

Unknown said...

hey, I like all of those ideas a lot, especially music playing. I just remember, as a freshman, being drawn to the booths where the people were the most welcoming despite the fact that I might have no interest in the club/organization. There were some really great clubs that I passed up, even with the great set up of the booth, because the people attending the booth would sit there and watch me pass them. Let's not be those people. We need to talk to the freshman more than anything else.

Powered by Blogger.