Seventy-five student organizations alongside 25 local merchants set up booths both inside and outside the Campus Center on Friday to share news about their organization with students.
The First Friday Festival serves as a time for students to celebrate having finished their first week of classes and to meet some of the people that they’ll be getting to know over throughout the new school year. Hosted by the Campus Activities Board, First Friday was the final event for their Back@theBein series.
Brandy Stiverson, a junior with a double major in organizational communication and Spanish, said her organization, the University Ambassadors, chose to participate in the event to spread a positive message and image about their group to the students.
Bev Pancoast, the director of Next Generation Ministries at Church of the Master, has been to every First Friday Festival that has taken place in the past five years. During that time, Pancoast said she thinks the event has gotten bigger. “I think there has been more participation from not just the school but from the community,” she said.
This year, CAB hired a henna artist and two caricature artists to entertain students who attended. New merchants introduced to the event this year included Buffalo Wild Wings and Panera Bread. According to senior speech and organizational communication major Holly Bruner, who enlisted the help of the many merchants who added to the experience, there was such a strong interest in setting up tables at this year’s event that CAB had to cap it off at 100.
Greek life had a heavy presence at First Friday this year. Thirteen of the 14 fraternities and sororities on campus set up booths to promote themselves at the event. “First Friday is beneficial to all of the organizations on campus,” said Jenn Walton, a junior literature studies major representing Epsilon Kappa Tau.
