Salisbury University’s radio station, WXSU, hosted their first big event of 2023 in the Guerrieri Student Union last Thursday on Oct. 19. Students poured into the Wicomico Room to roller skate as colorful lights flashed and disco music played at full blast.
At the disposal of the students were bins of roller skates, food items and a variety of drinks creatively shaped in the letters “WXSU.” In the back corner of the room, a member of WXSU sat at the DJ booth and played their chosen music to the crowd.
WXSU has organized many events throughout the year. Last week’s roller skating night was the club's big event of 2023, intending to act as a relief from the stresses of everyday college life and also draw attention to SU’s radio station.
Jonah Halper, an SU sophomore double majoring in Psychology and Communications, is a member of WXSU and worked the front desk of the event. He started working with WXSU his first semester in college and intends to apply for a leadership position soon.
“This event is just to have fun,” Halper said. “We're out here having fun and playing good music [to] promote a fun environment, have something safe to do on campus, something that hasn't been done all too often here.”
“We’re here to have a fun little theme, give people a chance to escape the realities of school and just have a fun stress-free night with their friends.”
Aaron Cave, an SU senior majoring in Accounting and WXSU’s general manager, handles the financial aspects of the club and reached out to the Finance and Appropriations board in March to fund the event.
“As long as you budget for it and design the event beforehand in March you’re usually allowed to go for it,” Cave said.
WXSU traditionally DJs for other club’s events and wanted an outreach event to attract potential club members or clientele. They felt 70s disco matched the ‘vibe’ of the club.
“I feel like that's the vibe that WXSU goes for, it's kinda like 70s disco,” he said. “We’re trying to do more DJing at events, we've done that for years, but I was like, why don't we just do our own event where we play disco [music]; we have the roller rink, we have the lights, we have everything.”
Based on the turn out from the Diversity Inclusion and Social Justice club’s similar event, the team was anticipating a high turnout.
“Should be about a couple hundred [attendees] but we've never done it before so we’ll see,” he said. “I think the diversity [club] did something similar a month ago. They had about 200 [people] after a couple hours, so we’re hoping for that.”
“Hopefully we did enough marketing, we’ll have to see.”
The number of skaters had to be limited at any given time because there were only about 75 pairs of skates available for attendees. As some came in and others left, everyone who wished to skate was able to.
Students who attended the event believed attendees should go with other friends and admitted to it being intimidating to go alone. Abby Neilson, an undecided freshman, is one of these students.
“I'm in a group, I would definitely come as a group,” Neilson said. “I don't know if I’d have the [confidence] to do it alone.”
Despite Abby’s worry of “breaking an ankle,” she had an overall enjoyable time roller skating.
“I like the lights and I like the vibe, so I’m having fun,” she said.
By MARS ABLER
Staff Writer
Contributor: COLIN McEVERS
Featured images courtesy of COLIN McEVERS