On Friday May 26, Campus Activities hosted “4 Bar Friday”, inviting students from around campus to show off their skills or try it for the first time on the SURC’s East Patio.

“This is a way to express who you are and what you believe in,” said Ted Wolfe, a student programmer at Campus Activities, according to the CWU Publicity Center. “I rap and I just hope people can come and feel like they’re in a safe environment to express themselves.”

Between noon and 1 p.m. there a steady crowd of 15 people that gathered around the performers, either watching or waiting for their turn to grab the mic.

“I think that students  should be thinking about [how] no one’s going to judge them, if you want to go ahead and try just do it,” said Zack Velasquez, a sophomore business major who stood up and performed more than once during the event. “I mean it’s hard but it’s easy, it just depends on who you are.”

Velasquez believes that he knows what he’s doing and this wasn’t his first time letting out a few bars, he hopes that eventually he’ll be able to make it and looks forward to opportunities like this.

“A lot of people aren’t judgemental and they won’t care, they’re gonna be supportive of what you do,” Velasquez said. “I normally don’t get that a lot unless I do something like this and it gives me a motivation booster.”

While the students were encouraged to keep their performance down to four bars, students could always take turns letting others go before continuing on or starting something new.

Staff at the event emphasized that it wasn’t a competition however, and that they weren’t conducting rap battles as much as they were encouraging everyone to try rapping together.

“I think this Friday went pretty good. I didn’t expect to be a whole bunch of people,” Wolfe said. “The goal of the event was to provide students with a chance to express themselves through rap, whether or not we had one person or a hundred people rap. I think students reacted well on both sides.”