Every year, during the first week of the fall semester, the Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) holds Camfest, a welcome-back event for students. Camfest is happening this year from Tuesday, September 7 to Friday, September 10, and it will look a bit different than it has in previous years.
CCSS outreach coordinator Quinn Park says that the CCSS is excited to welcome students back to campus, and he’s hopeful that doing Camfest a bit differently this year because of the pandemic is also a good way to reach more students. Camfest will no longer be two large events, as it has been in the past, but rather, a series of smaller-scale events.
“This is going to reach more students, but in a way that doesn’t congregate students,” says Park.
This year Camfest will be held Tuesday through Friday at both Interurban and Lansdowne simultaneously for a total of eight events.
“We feel that, pandemic aside, this might be an interesting way to go, anyways,” he says. “We’re all about trying new things, and it might be a good way to reach out to more students.”
Park says that having several Camfests is a way to get students who are in classes at different times.
“You have to remember, different class schedules and stuff will allow us to interact with the students—on Thursday, for instance, we’re trying to reach out to evening-class students, 1:00 to 6:00 at both campuses.”
Park says that Camfest will have the same safety protocols that the rest of the college has.
“Anything that Camosun as an institution recommends or has a rule, we are following,” he says.
Park says that, similar to last year’s Camfest, the college and the CCSS are putting together bags of free items for students.
“They contain lots of swag,” says Park, “and we’re producing them ahead of time so we can hand them out to students [as] all one bag of swag, rather than lots of different bags of swag.”
Park says that the CCSS is excited to continue to grow their partnership with Camosun to produce Camfest.
“That’s always exciting, to get the institution fully involved with all the aspects of welcoming our members back to campus, or a lot of them to campus,” says Park. “It’s exciting to, as usual, build a big spreadsheet and enter a lot of things into it to make this event happen.”
Island Health’s mobile vaccination van will be at Camfest. It will be at Lansdowne on Wednesday, September 8 from 10 am to 4 pm and on the Interurban campus on Thursday, September 9 from 10 am to 4 pm. Park says that if it offers some students an easy way to get vaccinated, that’s a good thing.
“I was excited to hear Camosun made arrangements to bring in that van,” he says. “It’s easy for us to add the additional space of a van. It’s a no-brainer to bring them in.”
See camosunstudent.org for more information on Camfest and the student society.