By Taylen Walks
The COVID-19 pandemic brought much doubt when it came to live events, especially at Northwest University. A huge aspect of campus life is live, in-person events. In the Fall 2020 semester, SAB held a variety of events—both big and small. These events allow students to get out of the world of school and studying to unwind and have some fun with their peers.
While still able to host events throughout the semester, SAB had to see the cancellation of most of their typical fall events due to COVID-19 concerns and government guidelines. SAB director, Brandon Jones, mentioned that plans were being shot down every week and they had to constantly try to rebuild plans for the spring semester, especially for bigger events like Screaming Eagles Week.
“After getting to live through last semester and feel out how we now do life on campus and explored ways we could do social events in a socially distant way, we felt we owed our community the best possible semester we could give them… we said if we could do these events in the spring in some way, we just had to make it happen,” Jones said.
Seeing the events from first semester being put on the chopping block, SAB felt like they had to give the students the best semester to date and hold some of these bigger events. This will be the first semester at Northwest University where they will be holding Screaming Eagles Week and Mr. Northwest in the same semester.
Event Coordinator Megan Creek said, “Even though there is a lot that goes into planning each of these events, it is amazing to have a supportive team that works together.”
The safety of the students is SAB’s number one concern when it comes to holding these events, especially the events that are held indoors, like Mr. Northwest and the Lip Sync Battle. SAB is going to follow the lead of Chapel and Pursuit and have live viewing in a small capacity along with live viewing rooms in larger spaces on campus to encourage that live audience feel. They are doing everything they can to make sure the students stay safe and socially distant while attending events.
Even though the pandemic is not over, being able to put on and attend these events brings some normalcy back into our lives. These events are just what our campus needs to get back into normal campus life.
