This December, University of Rhode Island’s Greek Life is holding a community tree lighting event to help bring together students and get the community into the holiday spirit.
URI Junior Austin Shission, one of the organizers for the event, explained that this event is open to everyone at the university, as well as elementary students at local schools. Greek life has been handing out flyers to local elementary schools and daycares to try to bring the community all together for this occasion.
“[It’s] just a good event for the holidays, to let students destress before finals start, a way to bring everyone together,” said Shission.
This is the second year Greek Life is holding the event. They hope to expand this event and make it bigger and better for the following years. “We didn’t quite get the word out as much as we’d like to [last year],” explained Shission, “so we weren’t quite as big [as we hoped].”
Located in fraternity circle, all the Greek life houses will be decorated for the holiday, and then will be judged by two groups–one made up of local kids in attendance.
Shission explained that “any fraternity that doesn’t have a house on campus is paired with another fraternity, so we’re all working together to make this event as best as possible.”
Greek life is asking all participants who come to the event to bring an unwrapped gift to donate to the URI police drive. “We would like to work as much as we can with the police department,” Shission said. “we’re on very good terms with them… and we’d like to continue that and help them out too.”
In addition to the tree lighting, there will be many events for attendees of all ages, including food, games, dancing and even pictures with Santa. The hope is that these activities will interest both college students and the young kids that were invited.
Activities being held include Reindeer Food, Corn hole, Build a snowman game, Dance Party, Storytime, Face Painting, Pin the Tail, Carol Karaoke, a Hula Hoop Contest, Dreidel, Paper Snowflakes, Duck Duck Goose, Letters to Santa, Pictures with Santa at FIJI, Coloring Station, “Snowball Fight”, Wordsearch/Crossword and Make an Ornament.
“Next year is the 125th anniversary of the university,” Shission said. “We’re trying to expand and make this event a lot bigger for next year.”
This event was started last year by the House Directors as a way to build community and get the students into the holiday spirit, according to Aurora Pierangelo, another organizer for the event.
Unfortunately, last year’s event was met with poor weather, which may have made the event not as big as they had hoped.
Shission and Pierangelo are both excited to see how the tree lighting turns out this year.
“I hope that it is well received by the community and the students have fun interacting with the kids who will be coming,” Pierangelo said.
The tree-lighting will be held in Fraternity Circle on Sunday, Dec. 11 from 4-6 p.m. The entire event is free, but donating unwrapped toys are encouraged.