The free mechanical bull sitting in front of the library all day Tuesday went largely unridden.
Despite being free to all students, the mechanical bull and other inflatable wonders of the carnival world were mysteriously neglected at this year’s “Welcome Back” picnic, sponsored by the Student Organization Resource Center. However, there was overall a considerable turnout among students interested in live music, free food, posters for sale and Greek life.
Although the yellow jackets and flies appeared very interested in Aramark Caterings’ free burgers and boiled hot dogs, the people kept coming. The central and heavily traveled location of the library’s Borchuck Plaza attracted lines or groups of students at nearly every booth during the picnic’s peak hours.
The press release issued by the SORC promised to students “free food, games and live music for all” but failed to mention the presence of almost every major campus Greek organization, including the Panhellenic Counsel.
“Next week is sorority recruitment,” senior Heather Suess explained. “We’re trying to get girls to sign up.” Suess and other Greek life participants in the “Welcome Back” picnic put in hours talking to interested students amidst a swarm of feasting bees and live music stationed on the library’s steps.
“We did alright,” said Sigma Alpha Epsilon representative Matt Murray regarding recruitment. “We got a couple of names, maybe 10 guys.”
Alumnus and former ETSU football player Troy DeCastro was present to raise interest in the possibility of the football program returning to ETSU. “I don’t know how you have homecoming without football in the Southeast,” DeCastro said.
Graduate student Seth Mather was spotted on the library steps grabbing a bite after the live music had ended. “It’s good enough,” Mather said of the food between bites. “You gotta watch out for the yellow jackets.
“I think it’s always good to have kind of welcoming things for the students,” Mather said.
“I was just walking back from class,” Kendall Kelley, freshman said. “I saw everybody kind of standing here; I thought ‘I’ll go check it out – might as well.”
Funville Mobile Carnival employees Marty Brigton and Curtis Myers guarded their unused mechanical bull at the picnic and fondly recalled the day’s greatest bull rider, a mysterious girl with “a tattoo of a Budweiser on her leg.”
Brigton and Myers remained bewildered to the lack of popularity shown to the free mechanical bull. “One lady had her kid here,” Brigton explained. “A couple of little bitty kids rode it.

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