This year’s carnival offered free beer, food and entertainment to the Florida Tech community.
Food trucks gathered in front of Crawford Green on Oct. 26., offering SMAC and El Cubanito, frozen chocolate bananas, and Meg O Malleys, a new addition to this year’s carnival.
Cat Nanney, director of student involvement, said she was pleased with the turnout of the event.
“It was the best year of homecoming we’ve ever had, even with the new beer garden for parents to join in on the fun,” said Nanney. “We decided this year to put more money toward merchandise that students can walk away with but still wanted to bring those fun carnival games.”
A homecoming shirt and a cloth bag were given out to students for free, as well as food tickets for the food trucks on the field.
Other than typical carnival games run by Residence Life, a new addition was a laser tag tent across from the beer garden.
“A lot of people showed up at this event this year,” Nanney said. “There were over 700 students that checked in, and we had to stop for a while due to the overflow of people.”
Families and parents were invited to the carnival due to Florida Tech family weekend occurring.
Alexandra Abova-Volkova, homecoming chair, said she had a good experience organizing the event, as well as the other events that occurred during the week.
“This is a larger turnout than it has been in the past years and the addition of a beer garden might have contributed to it,” said Volkova. “Although the activities at the football game were rained out, all the other events went smooth, even the talent show.”
The homecoming royalty winners were announced near the end of the carnival, as well as winners of a raffle.
Campus Activities Board and Phi Sigma Sigma won the royalty in first place, Alpha Phi and Baseball Club won second place and Delta Tau Delta and Residence Life came in third place.
Students such as Ivan Hernandez, a sophomore in computer science, won a Nintendo Switch for winning in the raffle.
“I didn’t even know how to react about it because I never win anything like that,” Hernandez said. “I had a really fun time hanging out with my fellow drumline members, and by far the best moment last night was the picture booth since we got to keep those memories.”
Even with the variety of food stations, some students like Erisa Hasanl, a Florida Tech alum, said they wanted more activities to take part in.
“It was much better last year,” said Hasanl. “There were more bouncy houses and games, but now there’s a lot of food for a lot of people. It felt like an actual carnival before.”
Hasanl also mentioned that the grass on the fields were very wet and difficult to walk across due to the rain earlier in the day.
Despite the mixed reaction, Volkova said it was a great experience for her to help run the homecoming events this year.
“Even though I’m graduating next semester and won’t be able to stay on the committee, I’m excited to see what Sam will do for next year,” Volkova said.