No More Midterm Stress, Just Carmel Apples

Kelsey Palmros

With midterms being left in the past, IRHA looks to give back to the residence hall students with this year’s Fall Fest.

IRHA parliament and co-directors of Events Viviana Berdecia-Martinez and Janelle Brodzik have been planning this year’s Fall Fest since the end of last semester.

“Our main role is to put on events for students living in the residence halls”, quoted Janelle Brodzik, co-director of Events.

The IRHA is a student run organization that is dedicated to the Residence Halls. Within the IRHA are parliament members, representatives of Residence Halls, event committees, as well leadership roles. David Garsow is the advisor for IRHA.

Fall Fest, an event that has become tradition for the IRHA, will commence on Monday October 19, lasting until the following Friday. Events will be located around Iowa State’s campus, mainly located near the UDCC.

“I can’t tell you an exact date, but I can tell you it has been a part of IRHA for a long time, it’s been around since before I was freshman” quoted Viviana Berdecia-Martinez, co-director of Events.

Publicized on Facebook, Twitter, and within the Residence Halls themselves, Fall Fest is a chance for the IRHA to give back to the students living in the halls.

“The main reason we do the events for the [residence hall] students’ is to create a bigger sense of community”, quoted Berdecia-Martinez.

Fall Fest is open to all Residence Hall students and is completely free. It will consist of five events that will take place all week long, with a new event each day.

To make Fall Fest possible, over 2,000 apples were purchased, outside vendors were brought in to help, the dining center has contributed, and Iowa State University faculty also had to approve of the events. The IRHA co-directors of events expect anywhere from 100-400 residence hall students per day at each event.

“we defiantly had to go through the authorization of ISU for permission”, quoted Brodzik.

Because this event is to take place on campus, measures were also taken to help make it more accessible for students in the Towers residence halls.

“Most of the events are located in the UDCC Area”, quoted Berdecia-Martinez. She also quoted that the event “is closer for the people of towers to grab a bus to come over to the UDCC”.

Towers resident, Bjorn Johnson; sophomore in Aerospace Engineering; however, had not heard of the event.

“I hadn’t heard about it until today”, quoted Johnson when asked about Fall Fest plans.

For Johnson, the bus distance did not matter. If he wanted to go to an event he would have regardless of being located in a residence hall off the immediate campus.

Berdecia-Martinez stated that for the spring Residence Hall event, the idea is to have an event located closer to, if not at Towers.

“We are defiantly looking to have something for towers in the next semester”, quoted Berdecia-Martinez.

In addition to the Residence Hall spring event, Berdecia-Martinez and other members of IRHA are looking to plan additional events, although details of the events are not yet available.