Tis the season for pumpkin everything; with less than a month until the Pumpkin Festival,The Office of Residential Life & Housing Services is preparing KSC students for one of the craziest days of the whole year.
For residents living on campus, resident directors and resident assistants have put a few rule changes in place for Pumpkin Fest weekend to try to have as little chaos on probably the busiest day in Keene. The rules are as follows:
1. All Residential Students are allowed one guest for no more than two consecutive nights during the Pumpkin Fest Weekend, which consists of Thursday October 16th, Friday October 17th, and Saturday October 18th.
2. All Residential Students need to PRE-REGISTER their 1 guest online, via the link provided, by Wed. Oct. 15th @ 5:00pm: http://tinyurl.com/
3. Any Residential Student who chooses to register their 1 guest for the Pumpkin Fest Weekend in person on Thursday Oct. 16th, Friday Oct. 17th or Saturday Oct. 18th, will be charged $25 and it will be billed to your student account
4. There will be 24-hour desk attending during the Pumpkin Fest Weekend. You are expected to show your student ID and guest pass at all times when entering a residence hall. When entering a residence hall that you do not live in, you need to make sure a resident of that hall comes down to the lobby to let you in.
5. If you are documented at any time during the Pumpkin Fest Weekend your guest may be asked to leave, and if your guest is not registered, your student account will be charged $100.
These are the most important rules changes to this year’s Pumpkin Fest, and in my opinion a little over board. I can understand the fact that KSC wants to keep the number of guests down because that will lessen the number of people present at Pumpkin Fest, but honestly this will not stop anyone from coming. The only thing this is going to do is make people sleep in their cars, sleep on someone’s random floor in a house, or worst of all, drive home.
I have lived 30 minutes from Keene my whole life, and I know for a fact the majority of students if not all of them do not come here to see the Pumpkins get counted, they come to party. In my opinion the only thing these rules changes are going to do is make Pumpkin Fest harder for the town of Keene itself. I know this is not the first year where students can only have one guest, but having to register them online? Having to pay $25 fee for not doing it online? Who does that help? No one. It’s just going to make for unnecessary conflict and arguments.
In an email sent out to all students living on campus from The Office of Residential Life & Housing Services, was a list of all the rules to having a guest for this year Pumpkin Fest. In an effort to make Pumpkin Fest as smooth as possible with guests and as safe as possible, KSC has come up with rules that might do the exact opposite. KSC students always try to sneak their guests in, why wouldn’t you? I would not want my friend to have to drive home or sleep in a car. In an effort to make Pumpkin Fest safe, students shouldn’t be allowed only one guest, because we all know we invite all our friends to come. In an effort to make Pumpkin Fest go as smooth as possible, it would be nice to see the college work with the students to make sure everyone is safe instead of implementing all these rules that WILL lead to unnecessary arguments and conflict.
Whether the people who put these rules in place wants to acknowledge this or not, Pumpkin Fest is very well known for Keene’s record breaking pumpkin count secondly, but for most Pumpkin Fest goers, it is merely known for its parties first. Honestly, I do think the college acknowledges this, simply because they put in very specific rules to keep drunk kids out of the dorms. Unfortunately in my opinion, they are only going to make it worse.