From outside of the Wicomico Room of the Guerrieri Student Union, all that could be heard was the shuffling of feet, occasional whoops and hollers and people randomly singing song lyrics.
But don’t let the words “silent disco” fool you into believing this was a quiet Saturday night for Salisbury University students.
On Oct. 20, nearly 50 students came out to the Student Organization for Activity Planning’s second straight Silent Disco event on Salisbury University’s campus.
Abigail Okereke, a student worker running the event, explained what SOAP is and how the idea of a silent disco event came to fruition.
“What SOAP does in general is provide good, clean, fun activities for students who are on campus who don’t want to leave campus to go out and party, so they have the opportunity to come here for different events that happen on campus,” Okereke said.
The idea for a silent disco sprouted from the idea that various people with different music tastes could come together to have fun.
“It would be a cool way to party … people could listen to whatever music they want, whether it be hip-hop or jazz, and it was a cool, interactive way to have a party,” Okereke said.
SOAP is a subset organization that is run through the Center for Student Involvement & Leadership.
The event was planned to be a simplistic setup. Each participant was given a headset that was tuned to three channels.
The neutral channel had some music to help distinguish and reset the listeners’ bearings.
The two channels controlled by the DJs were color coded as either blue or red, and each headset had lights to help distinguish which channel each person was listening to.
Of the students that attended, there were many different reasons for how the event drew their attention. Stephon Mason said he attended the event to become more active in the campus community.
“I had just finished my homework. I thought this would be a good thing to help digress,” Mason said.
Keona Kyler attended the event to scratch attending a silent disco off of her bucket list.
Neither student had ever attended a silent disco before the SOAP event. Being new to the experience, they both found it to be an interesting experience, but they voiced their opinions that it could have been promoted better.
Shyanne Gordon, the late nights and weekends chairperson for SOAP, also stated that promotion of the event was an issue.
When asked what could be done better, Gordon emphasized the need for better advertising.
“Marketing,” Gordon said. “Just trying to let people know about it.”
“A lot of people pass by and they are either busy or doing their schoolwork, so it’s hard for them to be like, ‘Oh, I didn’t clear my schedule for this event, but I definitely would have if I had known about it beforehand,’” Gordon said.
When asked whether the Silent Disco should be in the lineup of events in future semesters, Gordon said, “Yes, absolutely.”
By NATHAN VALDES
Staff writer
Featured photo: The Boston Globe image.