Resident Life: orange crushes and candy Olympics give Valentine’s Day celebrations

With Valentine’s Day approaching this Sunday, love was in the air for the students residing in the residence hall. With this in mind, the hall hosted two events that would make any friend or lover’s day: an Orange Crush giveaway and the candy Olympics. 

On Wednesday evening from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the residence hall lobby, Resident Assistant Gray Pocius held an Orange Crush giveaway.

Residents chose Orange Crush bottles to give to a resident living in the hall and attached secret notes for their recipients to the bottles with string. The bottles are to be distributed to residents by Pocius on Sunday afternoon. 

On Thursday night in the theatre room, resident assistant Jestine Lackner began her candy Olympics event at 6 p.m.

The main event consisted of residents teaming up with a partner for a blindfolded competition. One of the partners wore a blindfold while the other would verbally direct them around the room in search of Valentine’s Day-themed stuffed animals. Both teams would race simultaneously for the fastest time to collect all the stuffed animals.

The four teams that competed were Gray Pocius and Wiley Dowler versus Cynthia Johnson and Kaylee Brown, and Hannah Warwick and Rhett Sandquist versus Lauren Johnson and Ash Gutzmann.

“I was freaking out over a test so it was nice to take a break and interact with people,” said Dowler. 

Pocius and Dowler won first place, while Lauren Johnson and Gutzmann won second place in a sudden death tiebreaker round against Warwick and Sandquist that pitted each team against each other with the verbal director being the blindfolded contestant. Warwick and Sandquist won third place and Cynthia Johnson and Brown won fourth. 

Each team won their choice of either a bag of chocolates and candies or Valentine’s Day-themed stuffed animals. 

“Last night’s activities were fun,” said Dowler, “and I won stuffed animals which is always a plus.”

The secondary event in the candy Olympics involved residents guessing how many candies were in two jars, one filled with Hershey’s Kisses and the other filled with a variety of different miniature candies. Whoever guessed the number closest to the actual count won their respective jar. 

Cynthia won the varied jar while Regan won the Hershey’s Kisses jar. 

“I’m terrible at counting things like this,” said Cynthia Johnson, “so I’m definitely surprised that I won all this candy.”