Student Activities Brings Joy to Community

By: David Chen, Emi Levine, Athena Wang, Reilly Piersimoni

Student Activities continues to provide many opportunities for students to relax and enjoy Exeter this spring term. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, students have found joy in a variety of activities, including food trucks, bonfires, and badminton and spikeball tournaments. 

Food-based activities have been especially popular on campus. Many students expressed their appreciation for Coffee House, an event hosted every Friday at the Grainger Auditorium where students enjoy fresh drinks and watch live student performances, and the food trucks. “I really like Coffee House, because they bring in this great caterer and it gives student musicians a  great platform to perform for a live audience,” prep Nola Weeder said. 

Prep Solei Silva-Carin shared similar thoughts. “I think these have been really helpful for students, especially Coffee House. It gives a place for kids to express themselves during the weekend. And oftentimes, everyone's really kind… we'll sit there and listen to them and cheer them on,” Silva-Carin said. 

For Senior Noah Lee, Coffee House provided a place to relax. “Coffee House is probably my favorite event so far because it's a completely different world from the rest of campus. There, my friends and I can de-stress with an iced chai or a London fog while listening to student performers who are all so talented,” Lee said. 

Upper Zara Ahmed commented on the numerous food trucks options. “I just appreciate having extra food,” Ahmed said. “I love taking walks at night, so it's nice to have something to snack on while you're walking.”

“I really like when the Academy brings local restaurants onto campus because the restaurants get great revenue,” Ahmed added. “And then students also get good food that they otherwise can’t get because we can’t go off campus easily.”

Silva-Carin appreciated the diversity in meal choice. “I think the food trucks are really popular because it gives us [students] a chance to get a different taste of food and kind of stray away from the usual meal course on campus,” Silva-Carin said. 

Aside from treats and delicious food, many students have also enjoyed the athletic activities offered.

Prep Sophie Zhu mentioned her love for the ice skating held in Rink A at the Love Gym. “I think my favorite would be the skating because I do it with friends most of the time,” Zhu said. “It's a really nice way to de-stress at the end of the week when I'm really mentally exhausted. I can also chat with my friends and see them as well, which I really enjoy.”

Several students also shared their thoughts on the spikeball tournament the school organized.

Senior Mathew Ngai, one of the winners of the tournament, talked about his experience competing. “I loved playing in the spikeball tournament. It was great to play against so many of my friends and it helps that my team won second place with free ice cream!” Ngai said. “I think everybody loves playing spikeball and the fact that it’s more of a fun rather than serious sport made it very appealing.”

Fellow competitor and senior Emilio Abelmann enjoyed the opportunity to connect with others. “I had a great amount of fun with it [the tournament],” Abelmann said. “It was really nice to see a lot of different people coming from different dorms, different friend groups, and coming together to play spikeball.”

“I always wanted to test my spikeball skills against the greater Exeter community and the tournament was a nice way to do that at a higher level than just playing casually on the quad,” Ablemann added. “It was a nice friend activity and also a good way to stay engaged with the community.” 

“I've also really liked the Spikeball tournament and the badminton tournament because they're a great way to get our community together,” Lee said. 

The Love Gym’s Rink B activities are also a favorite among students. “I think I most frequently go to Rink B, just at night. It's a great way to just engage athletically with my friends. I always have fun, am able to get some exercise in and it’s a great way to just enjoy each other's company with spikeball, basketball, throwing a football, handball, all of the above,” Abelmann said. 

  “I always go to Rink B on Friday/Saturday nights because it gets dark out and there’s always fun games to play there,” Ngai said.

Upper Adam Belew also regularly visits Rink B over the weekends. “I like having massive soccer games [with my friends] and running around, just feeling tired, but being able to really enjoy myself,” he said.

Prep Finn Tronnes often hangs out with friends near the bonfires on the academic quad. “If there's no other space to hang out in a large pack, the bonfires are really great.”

 “The school is doing a really great job with offering activities, both indoor and outdoor, during this time. I'm satisfied with the way that they're doing things,” Ablemann said.

Upper Lekha Masoudi acknowledged the benefits the activities have on mental health. “The issue wasn't so much of boredom [for me] as it was from exhaustion from work, and then from exhaustion, you just don't want to do anything,” Masoudi said. “I think [the events] did a really good job of giving me things to do.”

Director of Student Activities Joanne Lembo noted students’ role in planning the various activities. “The process is collaborative—we meet with the students who are interested in planning the event. We collectively come up with a plan and divide and conquer the tasks,” Lembo said.

Assistant Director of Student Activities Kelly McGahie agreed. “It's really been a team effort,” McGahie said. “I feel like the year has evolved in terms of the events. We've gotten better at understanding COVID, and we've got better at understanding how it's impacting our ability to be together on campus and focus on what our primary purposes are.”

Prep Colbert Chang and upper Nick Chiu organized the badminton tournament, which had 90 participants. “During the early stages of planning of the tournament we looked at other tournaments and how those tournaments were run. We also talked with various faculty members about the viability of running a large scale badminton tournament and ended up deciding the important things such as venue, time and format,” Chang said. 

McGahie pointed out challenges with planning student activities during the pandemic. “COVID presented a whole host of problems that we didn't really expect, especially since we wanted the activities to be fun and interesting, but we also want to make sure that we're doing them in a safe way.”

Former Student Council Recreation Committee co-head and senior Cooper Walshe agreed. “It's a little difficult to come up with events that are COVID friendly. We have a lot of events that we'd like to do, but the administration says that's a little too dangerous, which we totally understand.”

Upper Adam Belew appreciated the COVID-safe activities. “The events that they're putting on makes it much easier for us to engage in things together without having to possibly break COVID guidelines.”

Belew also expressed enthusiasm for continuing events after the pandemic. “Hopefully, Rink B and Coffee House can be continued into post-COVID era,” he said. “I hope they become a much more regular thing.”

Another challenge the Recreation Committee encountered was setting times for activities. “We have to make sure that Exonians who are athletes can get to their games and practices,” Walshe said. “A lot of people have orchestra and different commitments. So it's a little tough to figure out when the best time would be.”

According to McGahie, the Academy’s finances posed another unique challenge during COVID. “It's not like the Academy has X amount of money in some big savings account, and we can go and make a withdrawal. A lot of the money that we have has rules for usage, so there were people involved in trying to figure out, ‘could we do X with money from Y.’ All of that is upstream of the Student Activities office, and certainly they were communicating with us,” McGahie said. “The idea was that if the Academy was going to make those purchases, those were things we could use for years after this year, not a one-time thing to use.”

McGahie encouraged students to take advantage of the activities offered every week. “You have more opportunities to be social and to enjoy each other's company and to be safe while doing that,” McGahie said. “Going forward after the pandemic is over, I hope [to try] to keep that in the forefront.”

Recreation Committee co-head and senior Maegan Paul emphasized the presence Student Activities has on campus. “We think that we know what students would want, but there are a lot of things that we just don't know about event planning that’s enriched by the Student Activities office,” Paul said. “They've been doing this for so long, and they're still engaged with every project that they work on. We definitely couldn't get anything done without their help.”