National Stress Out Day Carnival
A Great Success
Jillian Bevacqua
Issue date: 4/23/09 Section: News
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Active Minds, a new club on campus which is present at over 190 college campuses across the country, the ideal perfect-day activity: A National Stress Out Day Carnival, which expertly combined the outdoors with the ability to relieve stress of students across campus.
National Stress Out Day is an event created and sponsored by the national organization of Active Minds and co-sponsored by the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, which established the week of Apr. 13-17 as the time period for the 4th annual National Stress Out Day. The day and the carnival, which was sponsored by Active Minds and the Psychology Club, was created in the hopes of giving students multiple opportunities to relieve their end-of-semester stresses as well as present information about anxiety and related disorders.
The event was held on the front lawn, and participants couldn't have asked for more prefect weather. Students lounged on the lawn to watch performances from In Accord, Dynamics, and MIA and participated in activities like coloring and make your own stress balls, "pop-away cancer" at a Colleges Against Cancer table with bubble wrap, and playing with everything from play-dough and water balloons to hula hoops and jump ropes. All of the left over play dough and play dough toys, coloring materials, jump ropes and hula hoops were donated after the event to The Caring Place in Allentown.
EnAct also had a table for tye-dying and selling products made from entirely recycled materials, and a net was set up for volleyball or badminton games. Active Minds' Founding President Kelly Frazee '11, remarked on the overwhelming success of the event and the club's hopes to make it even bigger next year. She and the rest of the members of Active Minds have hopes of getting even more student groups involved to perform, such as dance teams and more a capella groups.
"I am overjoyed by how well received the event was, especially since both Active Minds and the Psychology Club are new student clubs on campus this year," said Frazee of the carnival. She continued to express her gratitude to the students who were in attendance, saying "the event would not have been as successful without the support that was received from the student body."
Students interested in getting further information about Active Minds can see last week's issue of the Weekly for Frazee's Op/Ed on the event, or can email bergactiveminds@gmail.com with any questions.