The College had its first Spontaneous Fun Day on Nov. 18, during which the Student Government Association (SGA) hosted a range of activities in Pulver Pavilion from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“This was an opportunity for students to step back and appreciate Colby and possibly recharge their batteries,” SGA Publicity Chair Raymond Rieling ’12 said.

The idea to give back to the students through an array of entertaining activities was on the SGA agenda since the beginning of the semester. The team that championed this particular event included Junior Class Presidents Erika Hinman ’13 and Keith Love ’13 as well as Sophomore Class Presidents Wayne Kim ’14 and Cole Yaverbaum ’14. As people walked through Pulver, a variety of activities greeted them, including free t-shirts, cotton candy, gelato and doughnuts from David Jacobs, affectionately known as the “Bobs’ [Roberts Dining Hall’s] Doughnut Man,” were handed out to passersby.

“We just looked at the activities that had been great hits in the past—[such as] cotton candy at the Winter Carnival last year—and everyone loves Bobs’ Doughnut Man,” Yaverbaum said. “[The] campus really needed this. It was a mental health day.”

Yaverbaum noted that she looked through similar institutions’ websites for ideas of events that the College could emulate. She found an interesting practice at Williams College: “Williams College has a day—now known as Mountain Day—where the President rings a bell, with no prior notice, to cancel all classes and the students head to the mountains or park and have fun,” Yaverbaum said.

At a time when students’ stress levels were high from exams and papers, the general discourse on campus and homesickness, the event came just in time. According to Hinman, it “was such a perfect coincidence, considering that [Spontaneous Fun Day] had been on the drawing board for about two months. This was exactly what we hoped for.”

A post entitled “So much fun,” by Mandy Ferguson ’12 on the Community Digest of Civil Discourse on Nov. 18 echoed Hinman’s statements. Ferguson wrote that Spontaneous Fun Day was “the perfect display of energy, spontaneity and fun. After a week or two of feeling disheartened by the events occurring on campus, days like today remind me why I chose to come to this school. I think that others will agree with me when I say that this event came at the perfect moment during an extremely difficult time in our community. Thanks for revitalizing my love for Colby.”

The Spontaneous Fun Day was a prototype of what SGA hopes will become a College tradition.