Students chill out as finals near

Chapman students trickled out of their study rooms and into the Piazza to laugh, eat cookies and push final exams to the back of their minds for at least a couple of minutes Thursday night.

The University Program Board (UPB) put on Chapman's first campus-wide holiday party, The Big Chill. The event took place in the Piazza from 8 p.m. to 9:30 Thursday night as a way to help students relieve stress before finals week, said Bryan Barnes, senior creative producing major and UPB's weekend programming chair. The event came from UPB's budget and cost about $3,000.

"I thought it would be cool to do something with the holidays or winter," Barnes said. "It's something that we didn't market for a good amount of time. But I think, especially for this week and for an event that has never happened before, I'm pretty pleased."

Students listened to music by Chapman Radio DJs and enjoyed cookies, cider and hot chocolate, provided by Sodexo. The event also featured performances by Chapman dance groups Floor 13 and Toxique.

However, it started off slowly. Most of the guests were students walking by and spotting the free food. Catherin Tran, a junior psychology major, was on her way back to the library after getting dinner from a restaurant in the circle when she stopped by the event to grab a plate full of cookies.

"I have no idea what this is," Tran said. "It's very, very useful. It's nice to see that in a stressful environment, you can still have positive feelings and good energy."

Barnes was not dissatisfied by the group of students taking plates of cookies and not sticking around for any of the performances because he has done similar things during different Chapman events, he said.

By the time Toxique and Floor 13 performed, around 9 p.m., the audience had nearly tripled in size.

When UPB first began publicizing the event, about a week and a half earlier, it was marketed as a five to 15 dollar secret Santa gift exchange. However, only four students ended up participating in this. Freshman communications major Shelby Stanton was one of them.

"I got a very cool digital camera," she said. "I mean I'm not really disappointed. I'm really happy with my gift. Of course, it'd be really nice if they'd had more people participate for the sake of the event."

Danielle Molina, a sophomore business major, had not heard of the event until she learned that her roommate was performing at it. After pulling an all-nighter, Molina used the event as an opportunity to relax.

Although UPB is unsure whether this event will be added to the committee's calendar of events with Spring Sizzle and Midnight Breakfast, senior Josh Kohansamad, psychology major and UPB executive chair, enjoyed trying something new.

"All of these events are fan favorites at Chapman. Someone's got to plan them, so that's what we do," Kohansamad said.