RSA to host NU birthday celebration

Students have the opportunity to celebrate the birthday of their university with cake and pizza after the women’s hockey game on Saturday.
Resident Student Association (RSA) will be hosting Founder's Day, a celebration of Northeastern’s first day Saturday at 4:30 p.m. in Krentzman quad.
“It’s a new event," said Sean Naegeli, president of RSA. "We're really hoping it will take off, were putting all of our effort in."
The administration began planning the event last spring in anticipation of the university's 111th birthday Oct. 3, and RSA joined the preparations two months ago, Naegeli said.
RSA Vice President for Programming Brittiny-Rae Gagnon said the idea for the event began when she noticed other schools with similar traditions and decided that Northeastern should start the tradition as well.
“I really like to do programs that bring people together. I’m really interested in building Northeastern’s spirit,” Gagnon said.
“We’re trying to build this in to become an annual program,” Naegeli said.
Students will receive free cake and pizza, and Northeastern's Pep Band and mascot will be there to celebrate, Naegeli said.
“I like the whole tradition and being together as a university, I think that’s cool,” said Carly Scharf, a freshman communication studies major.
The idea is to be a homecoming or block-party type event, Gagnon said. To advertise, RSA  members are planning on passing out flyers, and the Athletic Department will write about the event in its “Huskies Hotwire” e-mails.
Students will be more receptive to the event if RSA advertises more, Scharf said.
“We’re hoping we can get people to come here and go to the hockey game after … we want to get people out of their residence halls on a rainy day,” Naegeli said.
“The event is definitely aimed at having fun for students but is also focused on athletics,” said Matthew Soleyn, vice president for housing services for RSA.
Soleyn said that the event is getting a great deal of support from many different areas of the university, and the more students that attend, the more likely RSA can make the event a tradition.
“What’s most important is if students come out to it,” Soleyn said.
In the event of rain, the event will be held in the indoor quad,Naegeli said.  RSA is hosting the event with the Athletic Department, and plan to have the event between the women’s hockey game in the afternoon and the men’s exhibition hockey game Saturday evening.
“Even as a commuter student I would definitely go to something like this,” said Craig Zecchino, a freshman psychology major.
RSA are hoping for a large turnout, Naegeli said.
“I think most students will be receptive to it because it unites the whole student body and lets people meet new people,” Zecchino said.

10 comments

Football Fan

Sat Oct 3 2009 08:19

Also, it's "after the women’s hockey game on Saturday." There's a football game, too...

V

Fri Oct 2 2009 23:52

alumni, SGA has enough problems getting their stuff together. I don't think their involvement would remedy anything.

And students don't come to these things because they don't want to. No amount of advertising will do the trick. Face it, there is a small amount of students that are active with the school, continually show their school spirit, and show up to events like this. The rest go to class during the week and go out and party on the weekends, getting involved and showing any support for the school, student organizations, and their events (minus men's hockey) requires too much effort from our independent student body.

another alumni

Fri Oct 2 2009 15:46

and then there was that whole thing with smith anderson funding his trip to europe with rsa money. rsa must feel so lucky the news never found out about that.

Alumni

Fri Oct 2 2009 08:13

The problem with RSA is that each student pays them a fee, but RSA doesn't publish what it does with the money. They obviously have something to hide and don't care about the students who provide them with money to exist. If their event costs $50,000 dollars, and they are proud of it, they should be willing to say it cost this much. The only thing I remember they ever released was the cost of how much their TV channel was, and it was nice because they asked us as the students who pay, if they should continue it or not. I graduated so it doesn't affect me now, but for the people who weren't Seniors last year that was decent.

The big problem with RSA, too, is that a corrupt group of elitists try to run the show and make it so that going into the next year, those in the elite continue on the leadership. To be RSA President, you have to have served on RSA's e-board the year before. It helps maintain the elitism.

I am honestly surprised that SGA hasn't yet come in to try to fix the problems with RSA. I know one year there was an attempt that they gave up, but an oversight of RSA could be helpful.

Chris

Thu Oct 1 2009 16:17

I agree with 'Your name.' RSA's primary purpose is to a) give money to RA's, hall councils, and other student groups where it is (usually) put to good use and b) fund parties and trips for themselves glorified as "programming." One year when I was an undergrad, they spent $25k on a dance that less than 100 people attended.

Sorry John

Thu Oct 1 2009 13:34

We actually have about 16,000 students and 7900 on campus, so nope, no majority.

John

Thu Oct 1 2009 11:21

Don't we have 15000 students and over 8000 on-campus with Parcel 18, thus they represent a majority now?

Your name

Thu Oct 1 2009 10:32

Like all RSA events, the purpose of this one is to make their members feel good about themselves while pretending that they represent the majority of NU students. And btw have fun getting people to the indoor quad on a saturday. It won't let me post a link to weather.com, which predicts "t-showers."

columbus resident

Thu Oct 1 2009 10:19

RSA never advertises

concerned student

Thu Oct 1 2009 09:57

Does anyone else think it's a little too late to start publicizing about something like this? I feel that it's just going to be another event that only students who are "in the know" (like the RSA members quoted, who do not represent the majority of NU students) attend because not enough effort is made to let the entire student body know about it ahead of time. A celebration of the university should be open to all students more than in name only... the celebration should be about encouraging all students to take pride in NU regardless of their affiliations with student groups. Every student that lives on campus pays money to RSA and thus more than just the active members of that student group deserve to attend this event. They can't attend the event if they don't know about it.

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