The January CamFest may not be as grand as its September counterpart, but the core goals that the Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) sets out to accomplish with it are the same. CCSS outreach coordinator Quinn Park says that the January CamFest allows students to connect with the college.
“Students can count on warm drinks and donuts being there,” says Park. “There will be some clubs, too. I haven’t heard back from all of them, but some of the notable ones that are attending are the nursing club, the Adventure Club, and the wellness club. It’s very likely there will be more clubs that attend, but those are the definite ones.”
The January CamFest won’t have some of the issues that its bigger sibling in September had. For example, construction on the Fisher Building at the Lansdowne campus limited the available space for the September CamFest, which is most likely Camosun’s busiest day of the year. But this CamFest is on a small enough scale that construction isn’t a big concern, says Park.
“There won’t be as many tents as compared to our main CamFest,” he says, “so we aren’t really concerned by construction at either campus.”
For September’s CamFest, there are countless tents lining the courtyards of Camosun’s two campuses; the CCSS only puts out a few for January. Students might not realize it’s CamFest at all; they might think it’s just some people giving out free drinks. But Park says the event pulls its weight.
“If it wasn’t worth it, we wouldn’t keep doing it,” he says. “It’s not super costly to do. Most of the costs come from our supplies. One of the only things we actually do have to deal with is donuts. Of course, we don’t make them on campus, so we use a local bakery that supplies all the donuts for both January CamFests, and they’ve always done a great job.”
Given the season, weather plays a big part in the production of the January CamFest. If the weather turns out to be obstructive and a damper on attendees, then the whole event might be void—but Park is optimistic.
“It’s always an adventure to deal with weather,” says Park. “Last year, for instance, we had to deal with hail, which resulted in us having to use snow shovels to move all of the hail out of the way. Most years, there’s enough rain to form small rivers under our feet as we’re serving donuts, so that’s not that great. I don’t think the turnout will be affected as much as you might expect by the weather—students still need to get textbooks and go to the library. We try to catch the students doing some of this work; that’s why we set up the event on the first week of classes instead of the third, for instance. Warm drinks and donuts really help to gather people.”
CamFest
10 am to 2 pm Monday, January 8
Interurban campus
10 am to 2 pm Wednesday, January 10
Lansdowne campus
camosunstudent.org