Attending a university can be a lot of work. Some students work tediously at all hours of the day and night and study tons of material. As the semester ends, long papers, elaborate research assignments and exams are beginning to bear down on students. As a result, students must desperately search for ways to escape from the pressure.
Luckily, this weekend we’re given a great opportunity to experience a little bit of everything. Not only are there events for almost all of MSU sports just short of curling and water polo, there are a host of music and art experiences on and off of campus.
For instance, in regards to music, students can listen to the university choirs on Thursday, then revisit ’90s musical memories when Darius “Hootie” Rucker comes to play in the Ampitheatre. There are senior design exhibits and also the Cotton District Arts festival.
Wait, there’s a problem with all this. How does anyone expect to go to all these events? Where does this leave the art-loving baseball fan? For him, he is torn between visiting the finer things of life at the Arts Festival and seeing John Cohen and the diamond dogs take the field.
The weekend has been marketed as the Spring Homecoming for Mississippi State, and I think it has become a rich tradition. Personally, I have been counting the days until football season and will finally get a chance to see the Bulldogs hit the gridiron once again. Events like the spring game are the perfect opportunity to cultivate the greater need of Mississippi State – traditions.
This weekend is a golden opportunity to bring out some rich traditions. In many ways, we’ve embraced a tradition of change. Every year there are new logos and uniforms and in the past year, we’ve had three different MSU Presidents, but at the same time, we have to gather together the elements that make us unique and interesting, and I think the Super Bulldog Weekend has been a successful at this.
The Cotton District Arts Festival has been another successful event that has grown significantly in the past years. Last year, as a member of the MSU recycling club, I had a chance to spend most of the festival exploring the entire festival, including the popular foods as I dug through trash cans fruitlessly searching for half-empty beer cans and pop bottles. Disgusting? Yes, but enlightening too. In my hometown of Columbus, we have a similar event called the Market Street Festival and Starkville’s Arts Festival has a great opportunity to grow because of the beautiful Cotton District location.
Because of unfortunate scheduling, these two great events are clashing this weekend, and unfortunately we’re all missing out. But to complicate this issue even more for students, the semester is closing and finals are looming on the horizon. MSU students are two weekends from exams, which means stacks of essays and papers due.
Honestly, Starkville is not the most exciting college town,.Sometimes, it’s not exciting at all, and while this is refreshing sometimes, for students in the prime of their lives. it can be a drag. The community’s embrace of festivals and events like the Johnny Cash Cotton Pickin’ Festival, the Flower District Arts Festival and Super Bulldog Weekend are great opportunities to provide unique, interesting and fun opportunities in this rural utopia that we call Starkville.
The next step is planning and attendance. Until the dates are carefully scheduled and set out possibly years in advance complications will continue, to arise and the Starkville/MSU events will not be able to live up to their full potential. Even though all of the things happening this weekend are exciting and interesting, if students have to stay in because they’re preparing for grueling exams and papers, what is gained? We’re given an awesome chance to have students interact with alumni and members of the community, but if we can’t go to any of these, or the city, police or university cant dedicate themselves fully to what’s going on the possibility of failure looms high. I know I’m not going to be able to attend everything this weekend, and countless more are in the same boat. We’re making great strides in the available events but unless more thought is put into coordination, we’re all missing out.
Kyle Wrather is the news editor at The Reflector. He can be contacted at [email protected].