This year, the Residence Hall Association’s (RHA) Spring Fest didn’t go as planned.
Annually, the RHA hosts its Spring Fest on the Gerber/Bixler Quad and German Club parking lot. Its purpose is to provide students with exciting games, delicious food, activities, prizes and an overall fun time.
This year’s Spring Fest took place last Tuesday with a virtual world of video games theme. It catered to video game enthusiasts and even offered the chance for attendees to win a PlayStation5 via raffle.
For the first hour of the event, roughly 40 attendees were at the quad, participating in activities such as go-cart racing, and listening to music being played by the university’s radio station, WNHU 88.7.
The weather had been windy throughout the day, but during the event, a heavy gust of wind suddenly caused a large UFO inflatable to flip over.
“Out of nowhere the UFO completely flipped over hitting a lamp post and breaking it,” said Paola Hidalgo, a freshman at the university. Hidalgo had been volunteering at WNHU’s table when she witnessed the accident.
“I felt a bit scared in the moment because the music was originally supposed to be played behind the UFO and I cannot imagine what would’ve happened to me and other people volunteering along with the equipment,” said Hidalgo. Despite the property damage caused by the accident, no students were reported to be injured.
Following the incident, university police rushed to the scene and the event was cleared out.
Despite no injuries caused by the incident, the initial response was panic and confusion when it was unclear whether there were any students inside the inflatable.
“I didn’t know if there was anybody in it cause a couple people around me were like ‘oh oh I heard that there’s people in there,’” said Talia Viger, a freshman at the university. Viger was at the event tabling for Bixler’s Hall Council, where she represents the third floor.
“Also I saw that it took down like the two like little light thingies,” Viger said, referring to the lampposts knocked over by the inflatable, demonstrating the strength of the wind gust that flipped the inflatable.
For Viger, the incident was silly before seeing what the incident was capable of doing. “I think it was kind of like ‘oh this is silly’ and then like seeing what actually happened I was like ‘oh my god this is not good’ and like everybody just started running over like some people were screaming, it was kind of weird,” said Viger.
Rumors began circulating after the event of a student receiving free tuition after being injured in the event, however there have been no verifiable reports of this happening.
The RHA remained quiet after the incident, not addressing via social media or announcing the cancellation of the event, leaving students to only find out once they arrived at an empty quad between Gerber and Bixler.
