For the second semester fully back on campus since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Valentine’s Day is back in full swing at ETSU with events and excitement to fill the holiday air.
On Feb. 14, the D.P. Culp Student Center hosted a Valentine’s Day Speed Social from 6-7 p.m. in front of the campus bookstore. The social was one of the school’s first Valentine’s events since the COVID outbreak and brought community and inclusion to those wishing to meet some new faces on the 14th.
“The biggest motivation for this event was to just allow students to have fun, promote, and build community between students within ETSU,” says event coordinator Caelan Peterson.
Since the onset of the pandemic, inclusion and community has been difficult, resulting in a pool of regulations, restrictions and policies put in place to prevent the transmission of COVID-19. Social distancing has unintentionally created a rift in a relative sense of community, and ETSU is doing everything in its power to bounce back in full force with a record year for concerts, club meetings and many other exciting events.
The Valentine’s Day Speed Social was a way for students to “make a new friend, a new memory, and even gain a new perspective on life,” says Peterson.
With hopes to allow participants to break down barriers of social expectations and fears, musical chairs was the forefront of the event and was used as a tool to direct conversation and interaction. The game provided participants with a completely randomized route of meeting new individuals; chairs were set up in two circles for the event’s twenty participants, the interior circle holding ten participants and the exterior circle housing the remaining ten. The outer circle was directed to move upon the onset of music, following the protocol of musical chairs until the pausing of the tunes led to the meeting of a completely new individual.
For the student center, providing participants with an avenue for direct communication broke down the fears of initially starting a conversation and gave students a brand-new perspective on personal encounters.
“It was overall a very enjoyable experience on campus,” says undergraduate student David Chapman, who attended the event. “It opened the door to meet a ton of new people, all while having fun and getting to engage with others in ways I normally wouldn’t.”
