The fall semester at Wofford is notorious for its busy nature — football games, homecoming, Family Weekend and holiday breaks litter the calendar, making the semester seem utterly unrelenting, although incredibly fun for all involved on campus.
By design, Wofford’s fall hardly has the bandwidth to contain all of these beloved events and traditions, especially with many being conditional on a home football game.
However, this year’s fall calendar has had some especially heinous overlaps, arguably pushing students and social life beyond what they can handle.
The tragedy I am referring to is, of course, the Frankensteinian crossover of Halloween weekend and Family Weekend.
Wofford Family Weekend is truly like no other I have witnessed. Parents, alumni or not, flock to the row on Friday and Saturday night, perhaps after dining at The Kennedy or Level 10.
A mellow form of madness ensues — which I suppose is in the spirit of Halloween — as parents hop on stage with the band and relive their good ol’ days in Greek life.
However, I could not help but be a little frustrated and even confused about how to carry out Halloween with this energy looming in the background.
This year’s Halloween, perfectly placed on a Friday like a divine blessing, also facds the double-edged sword of this poor planning.
Perhaps I just prefer a little more work-life balance so to speak. By no means do I think that this cross-programmed Wofford holiday has made for a bad time, but I do think that my final college Halloween was a little off-kilter.
To make matters a little spookier, this Saturday of Family Weekend was one of two “Discover Days” held by the Admissions Office for prospective students.
It seems like there was truly little that could have been done to avoid this weekend’s
intersections, though it brings a spotlight to how such planning preys upon Wofford’s size and culture.
With under 2,000 students, we as a community can do little to avoid being involved on campus. Nearly every person I meet is the president of some club or another. Our ratio of outgoing, driven, social butterflies has to be unmatched. So, while improper planning such as this weekend may not impact a larger school, students at Wofford become stretched thin, and events collide and clash.
I think the crux of this poor planning may be the Wofford football schedule. Many events must be on a Saturday with a home game, yet our football schedule is consistently inconvenient.
For example, the pinnacle game against our long-time rival Furman University has never failed to fall over a school break during my time as a student here.
To make matters worse, this year our team managed to pull out a rare win at this game over fall break. At many other schools, students may have bothered to stay for such a tense game. Yet at Wofford, most were too tempted by time at home or fun travels, perhaps indicative of the commitment to our football culture.
With this in mind, is it even worth it to center our social calendar around football games? I suppose in the Southeast, especially, they are an apt way to fill your Saturday. Would it be totally unwarranted to have admissions events on a regular Saturday? Is football even a significant enough part of our student life for prospective students to witness?
Halloween this year was a little more trick than treat, as I personally felt like I had to wrangle competing events. For my final year at Wofford, I certainly want to make the most of all the events offered, but that becomes near impossible with such a convoluted schedule.
Although much of this overlap makes the days and weeks fly by, especially for those of us in our final year, it is at least reassuring that there is never a stagnant day on our campus.
