Michaela Lumpert, Campus Carrier news editor

Updated March 19, 2021: Previous version referred to junior Maggie Owen as senior Maggie Owens.

Since the pandemic began, KCAB continued to find ways to host events on campus while keeping students safe. This past fall semester, KCAB was able to continue their goal of having an activity almost every weekend of the semester. As the spring semester moves along, they hope to continue this goal.

KCAB president, junior Maggie Owen, explained that they have worked hard to keep students engaged in events on campus. 

Last semester, KCAB spent a significant amount of time planning events that followed COVID-19 protocols, but Owen stated that this new semester has already been different that last semester.

“It’s been a lot more fast-paced because we have more events this year,” Owen said. “We dedicate a lot of our weekly meetings to discussing different ideas about the event and COVID protocol.”

Because they are more familiar with COVID-19 protocol, planning events for the spring has been easier. 

“Now we have gotten more into the habit of thinking like that and we are trying to plan as much ahead as we possible and making our events larger in terms of distance,” Owen said. 

Looking forward to more spring events, Owen explained that they learned a lot about what worked from last semester. Most events this semester will continue to utilize the ideas of having many stations around a large, outdoor area, if possible. That way, as Owen stated, students are evenly spread out and socially distanced from each other. 

When it comes to planning the more traditional spring events, Owen stated that she and her team have been working hard to find new ways to re-imagine events like formal and casino night. 

“I’m really looking to forward to this semester because of our events like formal and casino night,” Owen said. “While we still have a lot of logistics to sort through, we are still anticipating trying to do some sort of variation of those events for our students.” 

The biggest issue with having these events is trying to coordinate them all while following COVID-19 protocols. Both formal and casino night are known to draw relatively large crowds of students, so Owen anticipates that her and the KCAB team will continue to find ways to restructure these two events so that they can still happen.

Overall, Owen is excited to continue to plan events for the semester. She explained that although attendance to KCAB events varies each week, she believes more students will continue to come to events, especially with the out-of-the-box themes and events the KCAB team is planning. 

Most of these new themes have come from the team looking back at old events. 

“We were trying to see what we could use and what we could revamp for this semester,” Owen said. “So that presented a challenge in itself, so we were like ‘let’s just start from scratch, any ideas we can find, we will turn into an event’.” 

The new events that came from this brainstorming session have been “Cir-du-Berry” and “Slice, Slice, Baby.” 

Senior Hunter Berry has been attending KCAB events since his freshman year, and has been looking forward to continuing attending events through his senior year. He explained that events have been simpler this semester and misses the style of events KCAB had before the start of COVID-19, but is glad that the events are still happening. 

“I like having a place to go hang out with my friends that’s not a common room or busy restaurant on Broad street,” Berry said.

As the semester continues, Owen is hopeful that her team will continue to provide events for students that are fun, engaging and safe. 

“Although events do look different than they used, we are still putting just much if not more work into making them happen because we love what we do and we also want to carry on these tradition that Berry holds really closely,” Owen said.