Temperatures at Stony Brook dropped to single digits on Saturday night, but that did not freeze the festivities of Polar Palooza, hosted by the Weekend Life Council. More than 275 students attended the event at the LDS Center in H Quad. Students were attracted to the offers of free ice skating, free massages and a hot chocolate bar.
Weekend Life Council collaborated with Active Minds, Chill, the Craft Center, RHA, USG and WSUB to help with the festivities. The organizations helped supply free items and activities for students. The Craft Center provided Valentine’s Day crafts, while Active Minds provided therapeutic coloring books. RHA provided the hot chocolate. Chill provided Chillfest mugs and WSUB provided free live music. Upon check-in, the first 275 students received free Weekend Life Council texting gloves. Another lucky 100 received free “What’s a Seawolf?” t-shirts and limited-edition Walk the Moon t-shirts provided by USG.
“The ‘What’s a Seawolf?’ t-shirts come in six different languages but for this event we gave away four,” Fiqry Kleib, the Vice President of Student Life for USG, said. “For today’s event we had Spanish, Greek, Sign Language and Mandarin.”
Although some students were disappointed that the ice skating rink was synthetic and not real ice, many said they still had a good time, citing the free food and items, amazing massages and just the feeling of being with others during the gloomy season.
Despite reservations eliciting an hour wait, most students said the massage was their favorite part of the night.
“That massage was the best seven minutes of my life!” Nick Conte, a junior Technological Systems Management major, said.
“Oh, it was heavenly! She really hit all the points, that 15 minutes put me to sleep,” Natasia Cole, a junior Sustainability and Environmental studies double major, said.
The massages were given by four professional massage therapists from Feel Well Inc., a local company that was recommended by the Commuter Student Association, said Danielle Espine and Linda Lee, the two co-coordinators of the event.
Natasha Reynoso, a junior Sustainability major, said her favorite part of the night were the free photo snowglobes, which were provided by Neon Entertainment.
Students were able to take their photos against a snowflake backdrop and then print their photos out and place them into snowglobes to keep. Students were given two options: an igloo-shaped snowglobe or a heart-shaped igloo snowglobe.
Most students enjoyed the appetizers that came in three waves at 8:30 p.m., 9:30 p.m., and 10:30 p.m.. The food service was structured this way so that students wouldn’t leave early, according to Lee, a junior Health Sciences and Business Management major.
However, the stuffed mushrooms, vegetarian spring rolls, mozzarella sticks, meatballs and assorted cheeses ran out before the third wave began because of the the huge turnout.
The students hardly noticed, saying the event brought them closer together in this cold weather.
“We bonded,” Sam Rosenthal, a senior Business Management major, said while his friends nodded their heads in agreement as they munched on their food.
