GEEK WEEK helps students relieve stress through fun activities

Rutgers Student Centers and Activities hosted their annual event of Geek Week from March 2 to March 6. Across various campuses, the organization hosted various activities each day to help students take a break from their exams and to just chill from their stressors in life.

Assistant Director Christina Caronna helped explain all the various events that she and the rest of her team helped set up for all the students.

“So we have an entire week of different events happening. So we have like a Super Smash tournament happening, a Catan tournament, we have our Lego masters coming back to build a mosaic, we have a video game truck on Morell Street,” she said. “We have roller skating, trivia, a Harry Potter night, D&D. So we got a ton of stuff going on so feel free to check out our website for all of our information on our event.”

DAY 1 – LIVINGSTON STUDENT CENTER

Caronna and her team kicked off Day 1 with their Lego Building Competition this past Monday. At the Multipurpose Room of the Livingston Student Center, free T-Shirts, free stickers, and a chance to win a gift card for building a Lego structure awaited attendees who were the fastest. Prizes ranged from third place being $15, second place being $25 and first place being a whopping $50 gift card. 

STEM educators Corey Samuels and Christine “Tacos” Blandino from Lego Masters helped host the event and Corey explained how important working with Lego can be for those who prefer working with creativity and gaining hands-on experience. 

“For us, STEM education is so important, especially with the younger kids. You know, it’s an introduction to robotics. It’s an introduction to engineering. For me, it’s a way to teach storytelling and artistic creativity and Lego is the only toy that allows you to do that,” Corey said. “Whenever you buy a Hot Wheel, you can only play with that car. You get a Barbie, you can only play with that Barbie. You could change the clothes and everything, but it’s still a Barbie at the end of the day. If you have Lego I could build a car, I can build a Barbie. I can make Barbie a car, you know? It’s all types of things you could do with Lego, and that’s why we love it so much.”

DAY 2 – LIVINGSTON STUDENT CENTER

Day 2 featured students coming back to the Livingston Student Center Multi Purpose Room for the Catan Tournament. For those who don’t know what Catan is, here’s Rafael Teheran, president of the board game club, explaining the game.

“One of like more popularized board games that used to be called the settlers of Catan. And then it just became Catan short. It’s a game where you have like hexes and you roll and you place little houses and roads and then you roll dice. Each hex has a number and you collect resource cards based off of what’s on it,” Teheran said. “So if you roll the number six and you look on the board there’s 2 sixes on the board, one of them might be on a quarry, and one of them might be in mountains. For the quarry, you’ll get a brick and for the mountains, you’ll get some ore. And then with those cards you’re able to build more roads or more settlements or upgrade them to cities which provide 2 resources, or you can buy these other things called development cards, which have a wide variety of effects.”

Over in the other room, a Super Smash Tournament was being held, featuring old TVs to play Super Smash Bros. Melee and a Nintendo Switch to play Smash Bros. Ultimate. Senior Jessie Galarza-Cornejo talked about her experience of attending the event to meet new friends and deal with stress. 

“So I recently just had 2 midterms. So this is really my first de-stress event. So just coming out to play honestly, just like having fun like it’s not competitive or anything, but just having fun honestly,” Galarza-Cornejo said. “Everyone destroying each other, roasting each other so it’s just all fun and games. So I like that about a lot of gaming tournaments.”

DAY 3 – COLLEGE AVENUE STUDENT CENTER

After 2 days of staying on Livi campus, Day 3 of GEEK WEEK had students hop on an LX bus to head to College Avenue Student Center. That Multi Purpose Room had been transformed to become a roller skating rink for students, both experienced and new skaters, to have fun in a more physical way. 

A recent grad and alumni named Faraz Chishty spoke about coming back to his home on campus to give skating a try for the very first time.

“Well, at first when I heard roller skating. I was like, ‘where is it gonna be?’ And then I saw I was like upstairs in College Ave Student Center and I was like, ‘Dude! This is so cool!’ So yeah, I mean, I’ve never roller skated before, but like, you know, it was like a good opportunity to like, try it out now,” Chishty said. “I fell a couple times but you know, it was still really cool, really fun. You gotta have this like side to side hips sway motion type thing and you know, I’m starting to get the hang of it. But, you know, I also knocked my friend over, so, you know, I mean, I don’t know.”

RUPA director Adithi Santhosh talked about all the kinds of events that were offered to students in addition to roller skating.

“So we have roller skating, we have an inflatable axe throwing game, we have a photo booth which makes you a Minecraft character and obviously pizza and water. Cause why not,” Santhosh said.

She then gave us a sneak peak to all the events RUPA has planned for the rest of March as well as April.

“So later this month in March, we have Scarlet Day of Service coming up on March 28th. And in April, some big ones to look forward to are Blossom Buddies on April 7th, Beats on the Banks is on April 10th, so look out for tickets. And Hot Dog Day is on April 22nd. So just something to look forward to.”

DAY 4 – DOUGLASS STUDENT CENTER

Day 4 took attendees over to the musical and environmental part of Rutgers at the Cook/Douglass campus, where a Harry Potter themed event was being held by the Harry Potter club called Muggle Mayhem in the Douglass Student Center. The organization set up the Douglass MPR with various decorations from the movies, hosted a “Triwizard Trivia Tournament” on Kahoot, got the whole room to split into teams for “Guess That Character” and so many other fun activities throughout the night. President Logan Mac Pherson talked about why the Harry Potter club wanted to be a part of GEEK WEEK as well as the various activities and the prizes to be won.

“So we kind of chose to do a GEEK WEEK event because we wanted to put ourselves out there. Our club currently has not that many individuals in it, so we ‘re trying to get more involvement in the club. And just try to have fun with people too. That’s just the whole point of all this,” Pherson said. “So far during our Muggle Mayhem Triwizard Tournament, we’ve had some trivia, and then now we’re doing some minute to win it challenges, and then we’re going to end it off with some Harry Potter themed riddles. Since GEEK WEEK is Lego themed, we’re giving out Lego sets for the prizes. So we have one of like Dumbledore and then one of Harry, with Hagrid, and then a big huge Harry Potter castle grand prize that we gave away.”

Nora Abdelaziz and Allison Wentzel, the Vice President and Secretary of the club respectively, talked about what made them want to join the Harry Potter club to begin with and also discussed what they normally do in the club during their normal meetings. 

“To start, I was a very big Harry Potter fan throughout middle school and high school. And I feel like when I went to college, I did not realize there would be a club for something, not really niche, but something smaller. So I was excited to have that opportunity to join something that I love as well Allison was joining with me,” Abdelaziz said. “So for today, since it’s a 3 hour event, we wanted to do multiple different activities. So yeah, we start out with the Kahoot, which was fun. There’s 100 questions separated by the books. And now we’re doing the minute to win it games like various different Harry Potter, like games, and they’re all in their houses, and then the last one is going to be a scavenger hunt, with, like riddles where they like try to solve the riddles and it comes up with, like a keyword at the end and that’s how like they win. So yeah, those are the events we have today.”

“It’s like a good vibes club,” she continued. “We play a lot of games, we do like random PowerPoint night. We do like board games. We recently did like a Pictionary Air where like you use a wand to draw pictures and show all of those which is a lot of fun.” Wentzel added, “We meet every other Monday night in the Busch student center room 115 from 9-10:30 PM.”

Students really enjoyed participating in the various activities to try and show off their knowledge of the popular franchise and win the prizes. Freshman Malaysia Rice explained what got her to come to take a bus that rainy night to attend this event amidst midterms.

“I’m a huge Potterhead, as they say. So I figured ‘sure just meet new people, do something fun that’s not studying for midterms. It gives you a space to partake in hobbies and relax for two hours or so before like grueling studying. And it’s just a break from the mundane. It’s like out of your routine. You know?”

DAY 5 – COLLEGE AVENUE STUDENT CENTER

On the last day of GEEK WEEK, students went back to the College Avenue Student Center for the option of not one but two events taking place in the same building, starting off with a Dungeons & Dragons event. Located behind the glass doors of Room 109 on the lower level, the area featured tables of the popular game for multiple attendees to group up and play together. This gave everyone a chance to make new friends while learning or playing the game, while also having a chance to participate in the raffle for the prize of a LEGO set. Nate Cotton, the President of Roll for Initiative: the Rutgers Dungeons & Dragons Club, spoke about what it was like to be a representative of GEEK WEEK for those who are fans of the popular game.

“GEEK WEEK is generally what I consider to be the largest event of geek clubs at Rutgers and I wanted to make sure that this was a rather bespoke and high quality event. Because of that, I made sure to theme everything as much around the general ‘GEEK WEEK’ theme as possible, because I understood that a level of cohesion would make it feel more interesting. If I made everything rather generic, it wouldn’t feel like a GEEK WEEK event. I wanted to have it feel like- particularly a solid conclusion, or at least semi conclusion, to the series of club oriented events during this week,” Cotton said. “I would say that Dungeons & Dragons is something that a lot of people are at the very least familiar with, whether they watch the movie, played Baldur’s Gate, or watch one of the many actual play series on the internet. And I wanted to sort of further that experience by being accessible to new players who technically aren’t as familiar with the game. And I wanted to draw people in and realize that this is one of the most complex and enjoyable geek hobbies that there are.”

The GEEK WEEK activities ended things off with a big bang for anime and video game lovers with a Pokémon-themed event. Themed around one of the most popular Japanese franchises, the Late Knight event featured many interactive things including a live band with the performers dressed as iconic Nintendo characters, a photobooth outside the doors with props that say quotes like Class of 2026 and “Gotta Catch Em All!”, a giant Jenga set, a variety of free food such as a custom ramen station and fried foods, Pokémon themed cupcakes, mochi donuts, boba, and non-alcoholic margaritas based on the fiery Pokémon Charmander and the electric Pokémon Pikachu.

A long line of students waited to get checked in with their NetID as well as receive a raffle ticket and a ticket for free boba, as well as a free Lego build of the Rutgers R logo. Amanda De Rama, a third-year student studying in the School of Nursing, was waiting in line with her Venipede plush and spoke about what made her want to come to the event.

“I was just honestly walking to the Atrium and I saw one of the TV screens and it said, ‘oh, there’s a Pokémon event today’. And I’m like, ‘oh I gotta go there right now.’”, De Rama said. “I’ve been a fan since like I was a kid. I would collect some cards and play some of the games. Really it’s part of my childhood.”

Monitoring the giant Jenga and photobooth outside the MPR doors was Matt Roffine, who spoke about what the franchise means to a lot of people as well as his time as the President of the Pokémon club. 

“Pokémon itself is a broad topic on its own. There’s games, there’s the shows, there’s the anime, there’s a card game, there’s the online games. There’s even more specific games that I learn like through the years, which is like, for example, Pokémon sleep, which I never even knew existed. It’s a big community honestly,” Roffine explained. “So this is my second year as being the president, and my last cause I’m graduating. And this past semester itself has been rough because again education takes priority over my club. But when I first started as president, I came into this office being like, ‘okay, we gotta like change certain things.’ I implemented having an Instagram, making more social media posts. Pretty much being more active in the social media world, because before that we only had a Facebook and a Discord server and no one uses Facebook really these days. We had a hop on the trends. Right now we’re getting ready to do some TikToks. We’re gonna actually have actual TikTok, besides the Instagram account. Hopefully we’re trying to post more coming soon.”

As one of the people who helped plan the event, Gabriela Contla, a first-year graduate student of the Graduate School of Education, spoke about what her position involved her doing to make this the grand finale of GEEK WEEK.

“So the band was always going to be part of GEEK WEEK. The band is something they have always come and helped us out in any type of way. So we actually booked them maybe like a month or two in advance because they’ve always been part of this. And getting all these vendors and getting all these people together, it took a lot of work,” Contla admitted. “But I was able to kind of do it by myself, also with the help of my supervisor and then also the Late Knight program interns. They were a really big help with me in doing this program, because I’ve never done this type of programming. But it took a lot of people to do it, kind of contacting different people like one of the food vendors. Mikey helped me kind of do this with all the food like I just kind of gave him my ideas, and he kind of brought them to life. I didn’t expect to do Mochi donuts or ramen, so it took a lot of hard work to bring all these people together, but the vendors know what they’re doing and this is their specialty. So kind of bringing my ideas and they brought them to life.”

Story by Joshua Jacob.