Pete Mendoza
Pete Mendoza / Vaquero Radio
What started off as a movie night idea transitioned into a potential new big event for the Brownsville campus, the Carnival of Madness, which takes place this week.
The Campus Activities Board (CAB) will host the Carnival of Madness from 5 to 10 p.m. Thursday at the UTRGV Duckhead Field in Brownsville.
Student Program Adviser Sam Camarillo explained how the Brownsville campus should have a big event since the Edinburg campus are usually the ones to get the major events.
“We’ve been talking about how the Edinburg Campus gets a lot of signature events that are really big,” Camarillo said. “We thought it would be a really good idea for us to have kind of a bigger event here in Brownsville as well. We talked about Halloween; we talked about a big event, and we were like, ‘Hey, what about a carnival?”
CAB and University Recreation organized the event.
“It was mainly the Campus Activities Board and Campus Recreation, University Rec,” Camarillo said. “We are reaching out to different departments to see [if] they want to participate, but they weren’t … the decision-makers in the process.”
He added CAB made many preparations for the Carnival of Madness with UREC to ensure the success of the event.
“We did the site visit, we’ve checked out the different facilities like electricity, we contacted the different vendors,” Camarillo said. “We have also looked for different attractions. We’ve reached out to different departments, reached out to different organizations, also confirmed that they were in good standing with the university so they can also participate.”
Pride and Signature Committee Chair Ximena Reyes said she and the other CAB committee chairs put a lot of thought into the design and marketing of the event.
“We brainstormed a lot with the committee and the chairs and the members and wanting to see what the students wanted,” Reyes said. “We also helped designing the marketing, and designing how the layouts going to look, how we’re going to post things, how we’re going to attract people to actually go to the event and we created the forms for the student organizations.”
Camarillo said CAB was rebuilding with new staff members, which includes Reyes.
“The Campus Activities Board has completely been renewed and has a completely new staff as well, so all the officers that are a part of this departmental organization are still in the end process of their training,” he said. “So, this is the last big event that I’m going to be helping to coordinate.”
Camarillo mentioned when it comes to students’ participation in events in the Duckhead, it has not been great. However, the organization wants anywhere from 500 to 600 students for the big event.
“Historically, when there’s been programming done at the Duckhead, attendance has been abysmal, like literally,” the program adviser said. “You can count them less than 20 people in attendance. I would love it if we [were] to see a thousand, but realistically, I am hoping for 500 to 600.”
Camarillo said CAB is really encouraging students to go to the event so there could be future similar events for the Brownsville campus.
“We’re allocating a lot of time, money to this event and it would be really disappointing if the Brownsville population didn’t show up to an event that we’re trying to make for them,” he said. “I really encourage everyone to give it a shot and support Brownsville events so that we can continue to have Brownsville events.”
Reyes added these would be new experiences for students and encouraged them to attend the event.
“This is an opportunity to get to know even more people,” Reyes said. “I know like events are a social-thing-type event. You can get out of your comfort zone, go into this event like maybe make some new friends, have new experiences.”
For more information about the Carnival of Madness and Campus Activities Board, visit utrgv.edu/cab.
This is Pete Mendoza for Vaquero Radio.
