COLUMBUS, OH—As the autumn semester of 2016 continues to droll on at Ohio State University, dorm activity boards across campus have begun planning out really fun and interactive events that students will only ever experience in passing on their way to literally anywhere else.
On average, an activity planning board creates four events a month. The vast majority of those events appear almost interesting to students, however they fail to engage the level of interest in young-adults necessary for them to willingly devote more than five minutes of their time toward.
“I keep seeing that Torres is doing a ‘Mario Kart and Chill’ night with free pizza, but honestly the timing never quite works out, and I don’t really feel like walking all the way to the lobby just to grab one slice of cheese pizza from Papa John’s and maybe get to play a round of an old game on an outdated console,” said Jaime Lancaster, a freshman student living in Archer House.
This sentiment is shared by many of Jaime’s classmates, and despite Ohio State’s new requirement for students to live on campus until their third year, activity boards’ events have not received any boost in attendance.
“Every Wednesday night, when we host ‘Bring Your Bae Trivia Night, featuring hot chocolate’ we see up to 20 people slowly saunter by, determining whether or not they want to stick around and win a $5 gift card to Bibibop,” said Meghan Richardson, lead program manager of Baker East’s executive board. “Usually we get around five of them to hang out for a half hour, but the moment the hot chocolate starts to taste too watery, they all decide they need to go study, or they just apologize and tell me that they ‘have to be somewhere else, literally anywhere else.’”
This daunting sequence of events has also been seen at events such as “Watch The Martian with a Socially Awkward Astronomy Professor Night,” and the “Talk to Your Hallmates Over the Sound of that Douche Playing Piano” social.
“It’s the same thing when we do our bi-monthly sexual health informational meeting with free bananas and other phallically shaped snacks,” said Meghan.
Some of these activity boards are determined to adjust their planned events to accommodate those students who just want something to “check out” on their way to a ‘Thirsty Thursday’ party.
Such an event saw mild success last week, when Morrill Tower held their “Make Small-Talk with Your Classmates while Waiting in Line for Pretzel Rods Night,” though the event summarily ended when the cute girl everybody wanted to finally meet left to go get fucked up at the Ski Club house party.
–Jacob Wright, Staff Member