Humber students got to smack whipped cream into a professor’s face to help raise money for scholarships in Humber’s recreation and leisure services program.
It was just one of many activities being held at Humber’s E-Concourse Tuesday afternoon organized by students in the program.
Each year, Humber’s special events management course requires its students to organize and host an event. This year’s theme was to celebrate the diverse population of students at Humber and showcase what recreation looks like in different countries.
“The event is great for providing students with real-time challenges, real-time problem-solving and real-time communication,” Prof. Ashin Patel said. “It also teaches them to find joy and solace in not only the execution but also the planning process.”
Humber's recreational event had a plethora of games that had cultural relation like Connect 4. Photo credit: Antonio Clarke
Students decorated the concourse with flags from several nations, from the red and white of Switzerland to yellow and blue of Tanzania. They set up tables selling various foods ranging from samosas and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. They also had games ranging from Connect-4 to Kahoot, along with the pie-throwing table.
Patel said he had already taken seven pies to the face within the first hour of the event, wanting to teach “openness to discomfort” to his students.
This was the first in-person event the program organized since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ethan O-Reilly, one of the students who worked on the event, said the big challenge was figuring out how to attract participants.
“A bunch of people as a class asked ‘What can we give away? What things can we do to create incentives for people to come in and enjoy this event?’ So everyone pitched what they can offer,” O-Reilly said.
Ethan O'Reilly is a student in the recreational and leisure services program and said that he did a lot of research on games and activities to attract students to participate. Photo credit: Antonio Clarke
In the years, students have collaborated with big companies like Canadian Tire and Pursuit OCR [an indoor adult obstacle course] to sponsor their events. This year, they found support from Perrier.
“From there, we curated what would work best and with Perrier, we fortunately had a connection to like 900 Free cans. So of course we’re gonna give these away for free and then Krispy Kreme Doughnuts,” he said.
As an event coordinator, Ethan hoped those who came out got a favourable impression of Humber’s diversity and felt good about themselves after the event.