This weekend the Student Activities Board is hosting Harvest Festival, the first event since the cancellation of the Garden Party. The event will be a carnival celebration chock-full of pumpkins, balloon animals, and deep-fried treats.
Harvest Festival will take place this Friday, Oct. 16, from 3 – 6 p.m. on the quad.
SAB typically hosts its Fall Fest event during Parents Weekend, but this year the group is taking elements from the previously-scheduled Carnival in the Arb and creating a new family-friendly event featuring dozens of carnival activities.
“We would always joke that Fall Fest is our ‘white girl’ fall event where we drink coffee, eat donuts, listen to music, and paint pumpkins,” said junior and SAB Big Event Leader Luciya Katcher. “We’re keeping some of those elements but making it bigger so it appeals to a wider crowd on campus.”
The event will include pumpkin carving and painting, concession foods, carnival games, a balloon artist, photo booths, and an airbrush tattoo artist.
“We also invite the faculty members and their families, and all the parents that are in town for Parents Weekend because it’s an activity for everyone to do,” Katcher said. “We want to reach a wider interest and demographic.”
All food will be pre-packaged and handed out by SAB staff members in order to have less contact, keeping everything pandemic-safe, Katcher said.
After the cancellation of the Hillsdale County Fair this year, the Harvest Festival will provide some of the attractions and food that the students and faculty missed out on in September.
“We shifted more toward the carnival aspects this year,” Director of Student Activities Zane Mabry said. “Fall Fest has been a repeated event in the past and campus knows what to expect. It wasn’t a gigantic shift in style and vibe of the event, but we just wanted a little bit of a rebrand.”
SAB plans to go forward with the rest of its scheduled events this year.
“We’re excited to get back into the swing of the semester,” Mabry said. “Especially being off for a few weeks, we’re excited to keep doing what we’re doing and get back out there.