Students attend IMU’s festivities

Freshman Samantha Young decided she wanted a balloon shaped like a dragonfly. It was 4 feet long, blue and had big bulging eyes. Once other students saw it, they wanted to make theirs even more impressive. A few minutes later, students were competing on who could have the most creative balloons. Some were monkeys on trees, a yodeling woman’s helmet or an even bigger dragonfly, this time yellow.

Balloons were only one part of the events featured at Winter Welcome at the Union.

On Wednesday night, the Union Board sponsored the first Winter Welcome Night to welcome students back to campus for the spring semester. The event included the student involvement fair, which included organizations such as the Minority Association of Pre-Med Students and the Harry Potter Society. The event also included the second spring Taste of the Union.

There was a long line of students waiting to get their hands on some free food, including a chicken burrito and raspberry hot chocolate. In another area, there were silicone bracelets, face painting and balloon shaping. There was a station for wax hand modeling, where students could dip their hands and create their own gestures  in different colors of wax to form casts of their hands.

Young, the recipient of the balloon, said the event was a lot of fun.

“I got a giant dragonfly balloon,” Young said. “It’s really awesome and epic, and I keep hitting people with it. I got a picture with me attacking somebody else with this on my back.” 

The Harry Potter Society was one of the 50 student organizations at the student involvement portion of Winter Welcome night.

“The goal is to create a community within IU with people who have common interests and can bond over that interest for them to be themselves,” said Liz Fuerman, the minister of magic of the Harry Potter Society. “People don’t do this for their résumé. They’re here to make friends and have a good time.”

There was another kind of magic occurring in the Union on Wednesday night. Magician Daniel Lusk, owner of the Lusk Entertainment Group in Indianapolis, performed.

“I’m going to walk around, do magic, levitating the cards, student IDs, driver licenses, whatever they hand me,” he said. “I’ll levitate it for the students here and do a couple card tricks to amaze them.”

Even though the Taste of the Union happens every fall, this was only the second time that the IMU has done a combined event with Taste of the Union and Student Life and Learning, which is a part of the Division of Student Affairs.

“We got really lucky this year because we got to partner with our Student Life and Learning Office up on the third floor of the Union,” said Cassidy Sansone, an IMU staff member at Union Board Activities and Events team. “We made it a combo student involvement fair and Taste of the Union.

“It’s bigger this year than it was last spring. We’re hoping that it kind of takes on its own life the way that Taste of the Union has. We’re hoping that people get excited and come back to the Union as the center of campus, because that’s how we like to view ourselves … we’re the center of campus, so this is one of our events that we’re trying to aim to say ‘Hey, we have lots of things for you to explore and experience here.’”