Being part of the is more than just volunteering and getting attending every event for free. It’s watching Otto trying to fit into a circular tube and wet his bottom sliding down a steep snowy hill. It’s looking forward to a fun and food-filled event after all the hard work has been put into it.
As you can see, leading an off campus event is probably one of my favorite things of being an OAD Event Board member. It’s more exciting and less stressful than it seems. It is not as tedious as you don’t have to plan everything from top to bottom. It is more about assembling the team and leading them towards a successful night.
Being a Florida girl, I had no clue what snow tubing was, so being assigned to lead this event was interesting. It started off like every off campus event: I had to assemble my team of volunteers, first asking board members and then asking members of our volunteer squad. Usually, if we need a lot of volunteers and our board members and squad have not filled up those slots, we proceed to asking resident advisors. The next step is to come up with some catchy captions for social media posts to promote the event. One of the corny captions I came up with was “If you think sledding down Crouse is fun, come snow tubing in a larger snowy playground! ❄️”
After this, all that was left to do was lead the event! We usually have our volunteers meet us an hour before the event. Since Greek Peak is about an hour away, buses left college place at 9 p.m. so we asked volunteers to meet at 8 p.m.
As a lead, you need to arrive an hour-or-so before the volunteers to prepare for the meeting. I met with Jeffrey, program coordinator for the Office of Student Activities, at around 7 p.m. to prepare everything.
We prepared the bus bags with everything volunteers would need. This included a ticket scanner, student I.D. scanner, waivers to snow tube, pens, pencils and end of event surveys. After this I had to prepare the information I needed to give the volunteers during our meeting. This includes who is in charge of loading which buses, what needs to be done (scan tickets and ids), what the volunteers need to announce to the students and pass out (waivers) and the time we are leaving from the venue.
After all the talking, it was go time and the team assembled by the buses and we loaded them all as quickly and smoothly as possible. During this process I assured everything was going well, helped the volunteers with any problems they had, and told the volunteers when their buses were allowed to leave.
While at the event, Otto greeted us and skipped the line and personally delivered me a box of pizza (he is unpredictable). As you can see, once at the venue we all get to lay back, grub down, maybe scream while snow tubing down the steep hill (if anyone asks, was not me!) and just have a good time!
At the end we assure every student is in the bus and has a safe ride home. At the end of the night when I am finally under my warm covers, I feel content and thankful to be part of such a great team.
I love the rush of planning events, making decisions with the board, and just seeing how happy and thankful students are at the end of the day. If this sounds like something you would enjoy doing, today! Don’t miss out on the rest of the planned this semester!
My Tips for a Successful Event:
- Prepare for your events ahead of time
- Don’t be afraid to ask your colleagues for help and opinions!
- Be professional but also show your personality!
- Find creative ways to promote events
- Plan events that appeal to your audience (college students)
- Try not to stress and show positivity
- Always smile! 🙂
Written by Maria Martin ’22, College of Arts and Sciences, Orange After Dark Event Board