With the return of in-person classes for everyone comes the return of in-person Campus Activities Board (CAB) events. One of the events this past week CAB had to offer was fossil-digging themed, although students had mixed reactions to its execution.

Students had the opportunity on Sept. 11 to test out their archeology skills as they dug for dinosaur fossils (which were actually rocks and dinosaur eggs) in buckets of sand.

The creator of the event, Emily Vath, a sophomore theatre arts major and Pioneer Series coordinator, wanted to give students an opportunity to unwind with a bit of nostalgia.

“I thought it would be a really cool way to just bring people back to their childhood with dinosaurs and make something fun that’s never been on campus before for people to win prizes,” Vath said.

This event was a Point Park After Dark event. These kinds of events take place on weekends and at night to give students a different perspective of the school.

“The Student Center closes at five on the weekends, so the Point Park After Dark events are meant to bring students into the Student Center when they normally wouldn’t be allowed to be,” Vath said. “It’s also meant to bring students together at a time where we don’t have any classes or anything else really to do.”

The event has been in the making since last semester in the spring and since then some different elements were added in since students can now gather in-person.

It started off with chips and drinks for students to snack on while they wait in line to enter the digging area. This took a bit of time because due to safety precautions with coronavirus—only four students total could be in the digging area at all times. There were also only two buckets that students could use to dig for fossils.

Sophomore graphic design major Alec Divel was excited about the event but ended up being let down by all the time it took to get into the area.

“I came out to the event because I just really like dinosaurs,” Divel said. “Unfortunately, it was a bit anticlimactic for all the time I waited. I ended up waiting in line for an hour just to spend about one minute actually getting to do something.”

Whenever it was their turn, each student got to take two big scoops, choosing from three buckets and a kiddie dinosaur pool filled with sand. Students picked out their rocks, and, based on the size of the rocks, got a number of raffle tickets to enter for prizes like AirPods, a movie basket, and of course a dinosaur basket. Everyone received three tickets no matter how many rocks they discovered. However, if a student found one of the big dinosaur eggs, they got to keep it and mine for a dino figure at home.

With these raffle prizes, a Millie’s coupon and a tiny dinosaur figure (if you’re lucky) being the only things that students could walk away with, senior screenwriting major Amber Schnupp is not sure they will be attending many more CAB events.

“The event was pretty mediocre in my honest opinion,” Schnupp said. “Every time I go to a CAB event, they run out of the fun stuff early, so there’s no actual reason to be there. Part of our money goes to this, so it’s frustrating when I can’t have fun at the events.”

While the event had some downfalls, Vath’s main goal for the event was just to get students together and to bring back the socialization aspect that students have missed.

“I just hope people leave smiling, hoping they win a raffle and that they got to talk to more people that they usually wouldn’t see,” Vath said.