Nearly 600 students attend Skidmore?s Club Fair

Every year on the first Friday of the fall semester, Skidmore holds a student club fair. It's become a popular tradition, especially for first-year students eager to see what opportunities are available to them to round out their college experience. And this year's Sept. 11 event was no exception in spite of the threatening skies that shifted the activity from the quad onto what became a very crowded and festive walkway.

Nearly 80 clubs and organizations ?10 or so in their first or second full year ?set up and manned tables with cool signs, handouts, goodies, and the all-important signup sheets (your e-mail please!). All in all, some 600 students attended the two-hour fair.

Senior Allie Little, president and founder of the Japanese drumming club Skidaiko, was there literally and figuratively drumming up business. So was junior Patrick Glennon, president of Skidmore's Student Entertainment Company. He was instrumental in landing the popular independent rock group Grizzly Bear for a Sept. 25 campus gig in the Sports and Recreation Center. Says Patrick, "SEC is the most relevant activity on campus for those who want to go into the music promotion business." Junior Haseeb Younas (Pakistan), sophomore Rohini Alamgir (Bangladesh), and senior Saranya Soundararajan (India) represented Hayat, whose purpose is to raise awareness of Islamic culture. And then there was sophomore Michael Dupre, president and founder of the recent startup SkidCirque. His particular expertise: mountain unicycling. And he's from Iowa. Go figure!

Junior Ali Drucker, the Student Government Association's VP for Club Affairs, pronounced herself pleased: "My favorite part of the event is seeing how excited all of the first-year students are when they are presented with the breadth of activities that Skidmore clubs have to offer. I truly believe that clubs are the spirit of Skidmore, and while they have a presence in our day-to-day experiences here, there is something very exciting about having them all in one place competing for everyone's attention!"

For more on Skidmore's student clubs and organizations, click here.

To see photos of this year's club fair, click here.