The Oswego State SCMA Winter Bash got off to a slow start, but the social gathering picked up the tempo after a performance by Vocal Effect.
A small group of around 30 students and faculty from the School of Communications, Media and the Arts gathered Friday night in Tyler Hall with the purpose of creating a space for different departments of the school to meet and socialize.
The social included entertainment from Oswego State’s radio station, WNYO’s DJ Kodak, and Vocal Effect. The show choir performed an a cappella rendition of “Sh-Boom” by the Chords and a mashup of The Jackson 5’s “ABC” and “I Want You Back,” which turned into an a cappella version when the music stopped halfway through due to technical difficulties.
Mirroring the event itself, the group pulled it together and made it work. Like Vocal Effect President Dionisio Burgos Jr. said, “The show must go on.”
“At first I had a slight fear on my face, and then we just started singing, and then I heard the beatboxing from our member, Kiersten, and we just made it work,” Burgos said. “The audience thought it was planned.”
Following the show choir’s performance, students gathered in front of Kodak to dance and mingle with others.
“I feel like ‘The Cha-Cha Slide’ really brings people together,” said Vocal Effect Secretary Jade Gonzales. “If they do that at more events, there will be more mingling.”
The chair of the communications department, Mary Toale, headed the organization of the event with students in the Student Leadership Advisory Board and the help of other departments in the school.
“It was very quick coming back into the semester, so that was a bit of an issue, and since it was the first time, that was a little bit harder,” said Jessica Kisluk, a SLAB member. “Hopefully, as we do it next year, it’ll be better; we’ll be a lot more organized and we’ll know ahead of time.”
The communication department and SLAB orchestrate events typically aimed at students with majors in the media portion of the school, but Toale said the students wanted to see an event with all of the SCMA departments.
“It gives the opportunity for all of the students – communications, art, graphic, theater, music, everybody – to kind of mingle and talk to each other, to get to know what other people are doing,” Toale said.
The social was supposed to be held for media organizations in December 2017, but due to unavailable venues, the plan fell apart and was pushed to the spring semester, where the idea was expanded to the other departments, according to Toale.
In addition to there being a lack of advertising for the event in advance, Kisluk said she does not believe the frigid weather helped urge students to attend.
“I was not sure what would happen, and I said to someone, ‘You know, if 20 people show up, that’s great,’” Toale said. “I think for the first stab at it, we did all right.”
Toale said she hopes for next year’s event to have better promotion and planning and to help build more collaborations with different departments of the school.
Taylor Woods | The Oswegonian
