A Grey Day
In this Issue: Upcoming event: Spring Involvement Fair; Wakeville interdisciplinary arts festival; E-scooter and bike safety
On this grey, drizzly Thursday, I bring you several news items that may be of interest. As always, take what serves you and scroll past anything that doesn’t 🙂
Upcoming event: Spring Involvement Fair – Jan. 24
The Spring Involvement Fair will be held on Tuesday, Jan. 24 from 5-7 p.m. in the Benson University Center. This is a chance for all our Deacs to meet with student leaders of organizations currently seeking new members. More broadly, getting involved in campus organizations provides opportunities for students to meet new friends, deepen their current interests (or discover new ones!), and get engaged at Wake.
The Spring Involvement Fair can be especially helpful to students for whom their Greek recruitment experience did not go as they hoped. Personal story: my own niece was a Wake student several years ago. She had a disappointing sorority recruitment process the spring of her first year, and she was really looking for something to join to help give her things to do that spring. She decided to join the crew team, even though she had never rowed before. What she found through that involvement was a small group of students she saw regularly for practices and workouts, and those people became a close-knit friend group for her at a time she needed it. While she ultimately decided to go through recruitment again and was successful, she was probably as close (or maybe closer!) to her crew friends as her sorority sisters.
Feeling a sense of belonging is tied closely with campus involvement, so it is important for all students to find a few things to do outside of classes (or existing campus groups) to broaden their experiences and their social network. Urge your Deacs – of all years! – to go to the Spring Involvement Fair and find some new groups to try. You never know what great things can happen when you give something new a try.
Wakeville interdisciplinary arts festival
I get an email each week from Student Union and they announced a new initiative for later this spring that looks really cool:
“Wakeville is the first-ever student-led interdisciplinary arts festival with the goal of bringing different art forms together and celebrating the arts on campus. On Saturday, April 1st (12-6 p.m.) artists of every discipline will display, perform, or talk about art all around Scales. If you make music, dance, theatre, visual art, fashion, literature, presentations about art, or any other type of art.”
Students can sign up to share their art and participate in Wakeville. I hope for all of you who have arty Deacs, you will encourage them to be part of this event.
E-scooter and bike safety
Next week, Wake Forest is launching a safety campaign to remind the community of e-scooter and bike safety and to raise awareness about the potential fire hazards of charging and storing electronic mobile devices indoors. Several buildings on campus have electric outlets close to their main entrances where e-mobile devices can be charged safely. Small vehicle storage guidelines, safety tips and a downloadable PDF on safety guidelines can be found on the Transportation and Parking Services website. This may be helpful information if your student has an e-scooter or e-bike on campus.