Festifall drew thousands of students to Pierpont Commons on Monday and the Diag on Wednesday, offering the chance to learn more about the University’s hundreds of student organizations, as well as various academic programs and departments.
Kaila Sell, lead Festifall organizer and diversity, equity, and inclusion manager at the Center for Campus Involvement, spoke about the broad range of student organizations represented at the annual fair and how it compared to last year’s fair.
“We have around 965 student organizations, which is a slight increase from last year, and then there are 20 vendors,” Sell said. “That includes those on both Central and North Campus.”
Sell said she encourages students to look on the site Maize Pages for more information on all the organizations on campus since they are not all present at Festifall.
“Not all organizations are represented at Festifall, so if students either didn’t get a chance to attend or after the fact want to follow up and learn more about organizations, they should check out Maize Pages,” Sell said. “That has all organizations, their contact information, a little bit about them and they should be able to find more information there.”
Engineering junior Ashley Drzewicki, scholarship chair and ritual chair in Phi Sigma Rho, a social sorority for women in engineering and technical science fields, represented her organization at Festifall on North Campus. Drzewicki said she was impressed by the student turnout.
“The student turnout was really good,” Drzewicki said. “I wasn’t expecting to talk to as many people as I did and have a lot of really genuine conversations about Phi Rho. It is so nice for both incoming freshmen and transfer students as well as older students to get the opportunity to meet new clubs and new people.”
Engineering freshman Ashley McPike said she enjoyed being able to attend both Central Campus and the North Campus Festifall.
“I went to both Festifalls, and the North Campus Festifall was great for the engineering clubs and the Central Campus Festifall was great for other clubs that don’t necessarily have to do with my major,” McPike said. “Seeing everybody have their own little groups and niches is really cool to see, especially coming from a small school where I didn’t have this many options.”
LSA sophomore Varad Chapalgaonkar, deputy section head for The Michigan Journal of Economics, said he believes Festifall is a valuable resource to help students find extracurriculars they are passionate about at the University.
“Michigan is a big community and a lot of people want to do something with their time but don’t know where to start with finding clubs,” Chapalgaonkar said. “Festifall is a great resource to walk around with friends and actually see all these different clubs and hear their pitches.”
Erin Snyder, LSA sophomore and a member of Campus Advocates for Resilience, Empowerment, and Safety, a student organization focused on the health of the U-M student community, said in an interview with The Daily that Festifall is also incredibly important for new organizations looking to expand.
“For our club, it is great to gain new members,” Snyder said. “We are a very new club and formed just this year. We had been a subcommittee in our Central Student Government, and now we are trying to make it more accessible to the public which Festifall is helping with.”
During Festifall, about 45 members of the TAHRIR Coalition, an association of more than 90 pro-Palestine organizations, held a “die-in” demonstration on the Diag aiming to call attention to the destruction of all schools in Gaza amid U-M students’ return to campus. Four individuals were arrested at the protest; according to University spokesperson Colleen Mastony, one is a temporary U-M employee and the other three are unaffiliated with the University.
Daily Staff Reporter Alyssa Tisch can be reached at tischaa@umich.edu.
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