The Student Activities Board will host Insider’s Guide to Hillsdale, an event connecting students with local businesses, this Friday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Originally proposed by sophomore and SAB member Claire Lupini, Insider’s Guide to Hillsdale is a way for students to get to know the downtown area while having fun with friends. SAB will have a booth setup in front of the Hillsdale County Courthouse for students to meet at the start, and from there they will get a clue sheet to bring to businesses and score bingo spots for each spot they reach.
The game involves seventeen businesses, each with an activity card already prepared. When students arrive at each business, they will complete their activity in order to achieve that bingo spot. Students can collect a small bingo prize after completing four activities.
“They’re simple, like pick out your favorite book at the used bookstore downtown or take a picture of a really cute pet at the pet shop downtown, different stuff like that,” Lupini said.
And there are giveaways at certain businesses.
“Like the coffee shops will have a dollar off coffee if you show your student ID, and Smith’s Flowers will have a free flower, same with Blossom Shop,” Lupini said. “And then Toasted Mud you can start work on your own tile if you show your student ID, and then you get to take that home.”
And if they fill out the entire bingo sheet, students will be entered to win a goody basket.
Lupini proposed the event before Christmas break, inspired by her own hometown where they host an event called “Tourist for a Day” in which residents get free entry to museums and tours.
“I thought this would be a really good thing to bring to Hillsdale because we actually have a lot of really cool places in town,” she said. “This is a really good way to get people downtown and involved in the community.”
Staff Advisor Alexandra Whitford said that parents are welcome to joins students since it’s parents weekend.
“That was definitely an attracting quality [in selecting the date] to get parents in on knowing the college camps because they don’t really get the chance much to see downtown,” she said.
According to Lupini, work for the event really began the first full week of february, since new ideas always require significantly more work than annual events. The spring time is a good time to do outdoor events, such as the Detroit trip and the ski trip, since people are ready to get outside after the winter.
Because it’s a new event, SAB doesn’t know how large it will be, although Lupini said that on a scale of SAB events, it’s considered of the bigger events, comparable to Taste of Manning, and the entire SAB staff will be working the event.
“It could be fifty people. It could be a few hundred,” Whitford said. “But we’re prepared for them all.”
