Clubs and Organizations Vice President Jessica Cairo believes the goal of the annual Clubs and Organizations Carnival is to serve as both a well-needed break for students before finals week and as an introduction for returning students of the clubs and organizations they may not know about.

This year, Weber State University Student Involvement and Leadership held the Clubs and Organizations carnival on April 11 inside the Shepherd Union building and in the Stewart Bell
Tower Plaza.

“A lot of people don’t realize how many organizations we have on campus,” Cairo said. “What we have to offer, the things you can get involved in. People don’t normally don’t get out of the normal routine of ‘Go to school, go back home, go to work, go to sleep and come back to school.’”

Cairo believes the carnival offers an opportunity for students to get out and get connected.

For this year’s carnival, much of the planning and marketing was done before spring semester. This included budgeting as well as designing the T-shirts that were given out during the carnival.

“This is probably the first year we’ve had this many organizations,” Cairo said. “We had over 65 organizations register a booth this year. We tried to open up the event to as many as we could, and I think carnival is just going to get bigger and bigger.”

WSU senior Paul Reoyo has attended the carnival and other public events for many years. He believes the event has benefited from more engagement from the clubs and organizations with WSU students than in previous years.

“It’s almost night and day,” Reoyo said. “Clubs are much more active, especially in the Shepherd Union building this year. You hear more students communicating their points and signing up for these clubs. I wish it was like this during my
first year.”

During the event, many of the booths offered food to students, like spicy noodle cups and candy from the Korean Club. Like most events at Weber State University, Sodexo provided free food in the ballrooms as well.

“Most food has to be approved through Sodexo before it can be offered,” Cairo said. “I think they did great at providing food. We didn’t run out. I know people have a lot of complaints about Sodexo, but it was really convenient for them to set up everything for us.”

WSU sophomore student Destre Livaudais also felt like most of the food offered by the booths at the carnival were much better than what Sodexo offered at the ballrooms.

“From individual organizations it was good. From Sodexo, for catering on campus, I wasn’t impressed. It was lackluster,” Livaudais said. “But the individual organizations did well to bring interactive kinds of foods.”

Livaudais has been taking many of his classes exclusively at the Davis Campus, so he doesn’t go to the Ogden Campus often. He heard about the event from a friend a week prior to the event and decided to go to the campus just for the carnival, and it ended up an opportunity for him to reconnect with friends he hasn’t seen in quite some time.

“I mainly wanted to go to socialize with friends whom I don’t see outside of Ogden campus,” Livaudais said. “I haven’t seen many of them in over a year, so it was a good experience.”