Students gathered at Notre Dame Stadium on Tuesday for the annual Student Activities Office (SAO) Activities Night.
Hundreds of clubs and organizations attempted to attract new members to their booths with everything from candy to prize wheels. There was a variety of clubs that catered to students of different interests, including Wall Street investing and semi-professional juggling.
The event was sponsored and organized by SAO along with the help of many other organizations who hope to recruit students from the tri-campus community to join their ranks.
Assistant director of student clubs Erin Riordan said the activities fair intended to “showcase our over 350 undergraduate clubs and organizations to incoming and returning students. The clubs will detail their upcoming events and hope to gain membership.”
Riordan said she believes the club fair is a very important piece of Notre Dame’s educational system at large.
“At Notre Dame, there is an emphasis on the holistic approach to education,” she said. “This fair is about extracurricular and co-curricular activities available at Notre Dame [for] students to help them pursue that holistic growth.”
The student-led clubs that were represented at the fair are overseen by the Club Coordination Council (CCC), a part of the Notre Dame student government focused on managing the many undergraduate clubs at Notre Dame.
Junior Ricardo Pozas Garza, CCC secretary, said the fair aimed to reach students who weren’t heavily engaged in campus activities.
“It’s for them to be inspired by all of the really incredible and amazing work people and clubs here do and to find ways to be involved in those organizations,” he said.
Among the undergraduate clubs and organizations that were represented at the event was the Voice of the Fighting Irish Radio (WVFI), a student run radio station on campus.
“I think the activities fair benefits us by giving freshmen the opportunity to understand what it is our club is all about,” said junior Sophia Henn, head music director of the station. “Students especially benefit when they stop and talk to us. You can only tell so much about a club from a poster.”
The fair was not only about extracurricular clubs and organizations as it also promoted the service aspect of a Notre Dame education.
“We partnered with the Center for Social Concerns to bring in local nonprofits to provide service opportunities for the students,” Riordan said.
Hundreds of students attended the event. Graduate student Nicholas Assise said he tooks his time exploring the clubs and organizations available for him to join.
“As a graduate student, I don’t really have a feel for Notre Dame’s community because I live off campus,” he said. “This event helped out in that regard, and I’ve found a lot of clubs that I am interested in.”
