Glow sticks, black lights, volleyball and video games were all combined into one night of activities at the WSU Davis campus black light game night Friday.
Two floors of the D3 building were devoted to the game night, with video game competitions of “Halo,” “Mario Kart,” “Mortal Kombat 2” and “Call of Duty” conducted in various rooms.
“When I was a sophomore at NUAMES, we had a huge game night,” Mirra Valdez, a co-planner of the event who organized the gaming section, said. Because it was so popular, Valdez tried to recreate the activity.
During the process, Valdez ran into a few setbacks.
“We wanted to hook up a Nintendo GameCube in one of the rooms and Nintendo Wiis in the other rooms. However, you can’t do that with Nintendo products without an adapter,” Valdez said.
It was also difficult to gather enough controllers for all the games. “Rockband” was planned to be a featured game, but it became hard to locate all the equipment needed.
“We were having issues until 5:58 p.m.,” Valdez said of the event that began at 6 p.m.
Everything was pulled together and resulted in a successful activity, according to Yesenia Rodriguez, who coordinated the volleyball side of the event.
The volleyball competition was held in the ballroom, with players and the net covered in glow sticks and glow paint.
“My goal was to have at least 30 people, and we counted about 28, maybe more,” Rodriguez said.
Using student fees, the programming board planned this event to get students more involved.
“We want to make sure everybody gets the college experience and meets new people,” Rodriguez said. It was also designed to draw people to the Davis campus, especially D3, which is a new building.
Many of the attendees were students from NUAMES high school, which is located on the WSU Davis campus.
“I was banking on that, actually,” Valdez said. According to her, attracting attendees to the first event of the year is always hard, but having the NUAMES students there definitely helped.
“It was fun to just sit down and relax, hang out with friends,” said Lane Shoemaker, a NUAMES sophomore. “I think it helps build that student-campus relationship.”
To bring the night to an end, the winning volleyball team was awarded exclusive Davis campus t-shirts.
“Everyone was super excited,” Rodriguez said. “Everyone was just dancing, showing off their glowing lights.”
Students got very absorbed into the volleyball competition, but took the time to pause for a group photo.
A few goofed off and painted mustaches on each other with glow paint, while others used glow sticks to develop interesting fashion statements such as “dread sticks.”
“I’m glad I came,” NUAMES junior Colton Dixon said, as did many other attendees. He also attended the WSU Foam Bash last year.
“Based off of how the events gone, I’ll definitely be going to more Weber State events,” Dixon said.
