Campus Activities ran a well-attended Bingo Night at the Student Union and Recreation Center (SURC) Ballroom. The one and a half hour event only had 200 different Bingo cards, but an additional 50 people watched everyone play Bingo over the course of the event.
When the doors to the Ballroom opened, 15 minutes before the game started, students felt very excited as they waited in line to get checked in for the event. Graphic Design student Thea Batch and Media and Journalism student Floyd Lentz were especially eager to get started.
Batch said she decided to go to Bingo night because “I did the promotion for it. I made the posters for it. So I decided to be here because I wanted to see the event that I was marketing.” Batch added that she likes Bingo because, “it’s completely random. And I like that it’s luck-based, anyone can win, and it could be me tonight.”
Lentz, on the other hand, was excited to try and win big. “I heard about the prizes, and I thought the prizes were an awesome opportunity,” Lentz said. “I am seeing on the table in front of me, there’s laundry soap and fresh fruits and vegetables, which I think is important for college students to have a lot of their essentials that they might not know that they need for living on their own for the first time.”
When the game started, many of the players were screaming with excitement. Grace Pearsons, the program manager for Campus Activities, served as the primary host for the Bingo Night. She called out the numbers while one of her Special Events Coordinators, Music Education student Nina Soetamin, randomly rolled the numbers out of the Bingo cage.
Everyone’s goal was to get a regular Bingo, in which you had to mark five numbers in a row, for all the prizes. These prizes included CWU swag, school supplies and other college essentials donated from several campus clubs. Campus Activities gave the prizes in a specific order so that they could save the most costly and special ones for last.
Paramedicine student Malia Tewey was especially excited about those prizes. She said that her favorite part of the event was “seeing all the prizes that kind of varied from different … sponsors, if you will, sponsorships from different areas, like the Hype, the Student Rec, Multicultural, all that variety. So it kind of helps you know a little bit more about what this campus can offer.”
Special Events Coordinator and Business Administration and Wine Studies student Lesly Cadena noted that her committee was careful to choose prizes that were relevant to a typical college student. She said that she wanted to help host a Bingo night because “it’s fun and it’s a great way for people to find community here in Central Washington. It gives them the opportunity to win prizes that are essential to their day-to-day life.”
However, participants were mostly excited about the grand prize and the ‘grandest’ prize, which were the last two prizes that Campus Activities gave away. To win those two big prizes, participants had to get a Blackout, in which their entire card was marked.
The first grand prize was a water ping-pong table, which Primate Behavior and Ecology student Parker Merlan won. Expressing visible joy, Merlan said, “I got two prizes. I got some hand towels, which I need for my dorm. Me and my roommate are going to be very happy about that. And then I got a table for our dorm, which also I wanted because who doesn’t want a table in their dorm, because you want somewhere to eat in your dorm. I got some really great prizes.”
The second grand prize was a Danny DeVito cutout, which Malia Tewey won. She said she was so happy to get a life-sized picture of Danny DeVito because “He plays Mr. Wormwood, Matilda’s dad.” She continued, “Matilda was one of the first movies that I re-watched multiple times. I probably watched it over 100 times. But I love how independent Matilda is as a person.”
Over the course of the event, Pearsons found nothing but success. She said, “Everyone that came, you could just tell they were having a really good time. You could hear the collective gasp when someone was close to a Bingo. You could hear the groan when everyone had to clear their cards. And it was just this really fun buzz in the room that you could tell people were having a really good time. And after the success of tonight, I think we’ll definitely try and do it again in the future.”
“I love meeting people at these events because we never usually get the same turnout at every event,” Soetamin said. “And every event, I’ll always meet somebody new. I also love seeing the connections people are making with just people they’ve never met before, or being there with their friends.”
