This past Saturday was quite the busy day in Go Be Red land, as there were sports events and a carnival to attend for points. Unfortunately, more people ended up at the Union football game trip than in the McNeil Room for the carnival, though I still give my congratulations to our Engineers for making it that far. I was one of the few lucky people at the carnival, an event that could have very entertaining but ended up as a flop.
Since The Polytechnic had a booth at the carnival, I arrived early to help setup. Right from the beginning I could tell it was going to be a long afternoon, as only a few groups were set up, and there was no real organization to the event as a whole. We selected a table near the water fountain and trash, which later turned out to be ideal. I was impressed, however, that Fly 92 was at the event promoting the new Mariah Carey CD, but I could tell they were antsy when their guitars came out. They even turned up the music after awhile when people still were not showing up. I would not be surprised if people did not know about the carnival, as some people were doing homework on outlying tables.
The event was supposed to attract teams to play silly games at each booth to gain extra points, and each organization with a booth had to think of a game. Our silly game was try to see how many marshmallows can fit in your mouth, forcing people to run to the trash to spit them out and use the water fountain to wash it down. There were bags of the large marshmallows, and people were told to just stuff them in until they exploded. The first one to test it out, Andrew Verge ’07 from the Banana Slug Muffins, managed to fit 13 whole marshmallows, even with my making him laugh. The winner, however, was Manoj Mathew ’08 from Insane Box of Chocolates, who fit in 14 before dashing to spit them out.
Other student groups set up had rather creative games, as well. The OXE Chemical Engineering group had a ring toss with empty bottles as well as trivia with categories ranging from music to history to RPI. Trivia was the most popular game with movie trivia at the UPAC Cinema booth, and the Society of Women Engineers had trivia about prominent female engineers related to RPI. The easiest game was at the Statler & Waldorf table where contestants only had to pick a dum-dum from the board and report the color on the bottom. Each color was linked to a number of points, and they even got to keep the lollipop.
I would say the award for the best game goes to Ecologic, the campus group concerned with preserving the environment. They had various food objects set up for people to determine which was organic versus the brand name food. I tested this with their honey nut cheerios and the organic alternative, and even as an avid cheerios eater I had difficulty choosing between the two. Their game was certainly very creative and fit the group very well.
People did finally start to show up after the football buses returned, but almost the entire carnival was uneventful. I enjoyed watching people stuff marshmallows in their mouths, but I really do believe this event could have worked out better in the future with more time and planning. I must send one last final thank you to the teams who did come out to participate and provide me with a few hours of laughs.
