Megan Grenier

Equinox Staff

Spring Weekend 2013 kicked off on Thursday, April 18, with the much-favored event for Keen State College students: the carnival.

Nothing can beat taking a break from studying, writing papers and stressing about projects better than fried dough, candy apples and riding carnival rides until you’re sick.

In the unfortunate case of some students, the latter was all too true. The carnival is always a great stress reliever, even if it persuades most students to skip their afternoon classes and kick off Spring Weekend early with a few drinks.

The one thing most students seemed to miss about this year’s carnival was the free food. Last year the carnival was surrounded with free nachos, which always draws a crowd of broke college students.

The weather on Friday was finally in the 70s for what felt like the first time in a year. The population of KSC always seems to increase with such nice weather.

Everyone finally crawls out of hibernation and partakes in the festivities that come along with Spring Weekend.

There was definitely a lot of day drinking and hanging around outside to enjoy the warmth, but unfortunately not the sun.  Students gathered at their favorite party spots on Friday and Saturday afternoon to relax from a semester full of work.

At one party, the backyard was full of students playing lawn games and dancing to music. Students even filled the roof of the house to lounge in the 70-degree weather. Cheering, singing and the occasional fireworks could be heard from streets away. Day parties did not conclude most students’ celebrations.  Various parties were held during the night where students gathered after a long day of partying to continue the festivities.  Even the people who would prefer to go to the bars with friends chose to go to parties on Spring Weekend in order to enjoy the live music.

Every year it seems like it’s next to impossible to partake in everything that is going on during Spring Weekend without being completely drained by Monday.

But with all of the fun during the day, this didn’t stop students from gathering enough people at various nighttime parties to get broken up by the cops, but not even the cops stopped the live music and dancing.

The Spring Concert was of a different genre than the past few years. From artists such as Lupe Fiasco, Sam Adams and last year’s Girl Talk, country singer Chris Young was a big change this year. Students had mixed reactions about this selection.  Chris Young seemed to get either a good or bad reaction from students and not many in-between thoughts, but the line outside the student center was just as long as usual. SAC and Owl Nation held tailgating on the Athletic Complex and their zip line was popular talk around campus. This was a new addition to this year’s Spring Weekend and it was definitely a hit.

It’s safe to say that almost the entire crowd had nostalgia when filling the Spaulding Gymnasium to watch comedian Kenan Thompson Saturday night.  The majority of the audience grew up watching Kenan Thompson on Nickelodeon’s show, All That. From the huge applause and cheering from when Thompson took the stage to the endless line of students asking questions at the end of his performance, Thompson was definitely a favorite of the Spring Weekend events. It was a great way to wrap up the weekend’s festivities. Even though Sunday held no exciting Spring Weekend events, it was a great day to walk around town and enjoy the sun. Recuperating from a weekend like this is always tough and makes it feel like there is never enough time to do everything in one weekend.

Megan  Grenier can be contacted at

mgrenier@keene-equinox.com