On Thursday, Aug. 27 at 5 p.m., 108 organizations gathered on the Gator quad for the Student Involvement Fair.

Gina Panzetta, secretary of the Office of Student Involvement, described the event outside the campus center.

“The involvement fair is a highly visible recruitment opportunity for organizations, providing incoming freshman and all students a glimpse of organizations at Allegheny and all their members,” said Panzetta.

There have been changes over the years to the event, but the objective has remained the same.

“The fair was started in the fall of 1965,” said Panzetta. “At that time it was called the Activities Fair.”

When the fair started on campus it was not as diverse as it is today.

“It was very Greek focused when it started,” said Panzetta.

Panzetta said OSI is in charge of organizing the involvement fair.
“Our office reaches out to all organization presidents and announcements are placed on My Allegheny for the entire community, inviting them to participate,” said Panzetta.

Sam Green, ’17, the secretary for Active Minds, shared her thoughts about the event.

“I think it’s nice because it gives the freshmen a big smorgasbord of opportunities and what’s out there, otherwise how else would they know?” said Green. “The only reason why I joined clubs, and I didn’t go to the involvement fair, was later sophomore year when I had friends that were in clubs and told me about them. I kind of wish I would have gone to something like this so I would’ve known what’s out there.”

First years Abbie Johnson and Sydney Lewis wandered around the involvement fair yesterday.

“It’s very cool,” said Johnson. “There are all these different activities here. I’m pretty excited.”

Both women took advantage of the event and showed interest in many of the organizations.

“We both signed up for a dozen,” said Lewis.

Rosalie Evans, ’16, the president of Gator Activities Programming praised the involvement fair.

“I was really excited about it because I knew coming in I wanted to be involved in a bunch of different things, and it was awesome to see everything in one place and know that these are all the different things and options,” said Evans. “I definitely think as a freshman you don’t know everything that’s out there and I thought it was a great way to start. I actually signed up for GAP there at my first one, so I definitely found things I ended up sticking with my whole time here.”

Evans said students should not feel intimidated when signing up for organizations on campus. Evans reflected on her experience with GAP.

“The whole feel of the club is that you can come when you want to, don’t come when you can’t,” said Evans. “We have a fluid group of members throughout the year, but we just try to let people know at our events that they can always start coming halfway through the year.”

Evans stressed the importance of trying new things.

“As a first-year, just sign up for things and maybe go to the first couple of meetings for sure just to try things out. Its going to be a new experience, it’s different once you’re here at college,” said Evans.

Green shared her feelings about students becoming involved on campus.

“I hope they find a place where they feel at home or a club that they’re interested in that expands their horizons, because that’s the point of college,” said Green.