By Kelli Kavinsky

Tables. Check. Student organization groups. Check. Ice cream. Check. Too cramped. Double check.

Student activities ran into a bit of a problem Monday afternoon when they hosted their Banana Split and Student Organization Fair. The problem,  the ice cream was in one place, while all student organization tables were elsewhere.

“Everything was split up. The ice cream was in the Hearthwell Lounge, while most of the tables with the toppings for the ice cream were out by the cafeteria,” said Samantha Gordon, a junior majoring in English and secretary for Alpha Sigma Alpha. “It was too clustered to have all the tables out in the main hall. The students weren’t getting the right experience.”

The Student Organization Fair was held to promote the different organizations, and help students to become involved. Nicky Damania, director of Student Activities said the ice cream and banana splits would be a good incentive for more students to participate, while also allowing each organization to be creative with their own choice of toppings to use.

“The Christian Challenge brought bacon bits which was very interesting, while the Anime club brought Japanese candy. It gave students a sense of the clubs,” Damania said.

Though students were able to interact with the organizations that signed up some, felt that it was all just in the way. Shayna Sherod, a sophomore psychology major, was working at the Information desk at the time felt everything would have been better if held elsewhere.

“It’s overwhelming trying to work during this. You can’t hear when people have questions or want help. You’re forced to push your way through people to get to the restroom and I could never tell if the people standing in front of me needed help or if they were just a part of the chaos,” Sherod said.

Senior education major and Vice President of the Teacher Education Association Amanda Mydlowski was indifferent about the issue of the event. “I think it was way crammed, but it also forced students to interact with the different organizations instead of just passing them by, which hasn’t ever really happened before.”

In recent years, the spring fair has been held in the Occhiato University Center ballroom. “In the three years I’ve been involved with the fair we’ve never done it anywhere except the ballroom. It just isn’t working out in the hall,” Gordan said.

The reason for moving the fair to a high traffic area was to get students to interact and to be engaged with the clubs. “When the fair was in the ballroom there was a low student attendance rate,” Damania said.

Though the event had a decent turn out with 20 student organizations signed up to participate, it seemed anyone could comment on was the lack of space chosen or for the case of where to find the ice cream,.

“Having the ice cream so far away from the tables with the toppings was not a good idea. Nobody knew where the ice cream was,” Mydlowski said.