Knights of the Roundtable held a free carnival for students from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Monday at Memory Mall. The event featured a goat petting zoo, complimentary refreshments and three different bounce houses.
Joseph Wiedeman
Knights of the Round Table hosted the KORT Karnival at Memory Mall Tuesday to help students relax after midterms.
The carnival featured classic games like ring toss and Connect Four, along with a live DJ from Knights of the Turntables and free refreshments in the form of popcorn and snow cones.
Students could also engage with the goats at the event’s petting zoo, which were brought by Alaska Farms Orlando.
Anasofia Marin, the programming coordinator for KORT and senior political science major, came up with the idea of Karnival. She said she wanted it to be an opportunity for students to connect with one another while also having a chance to get away from the stress of midterms.
“People are just walking by, and they see people hanging out so they make connections, and it also makes them more aware of our organization overall,” Marin said.
KORT is a student government-funded administrative resource working out of the Office of Student Involvement and aims to encourage further student participation in on campus events during each person’s collegiate experience, according to the OSI website.
It handles much of the paperwork for authorizing student organizations with connections to more than 600 different student-run organizations, according to the OSI website.
Khoi Nguyen, a DJ for the event and senior computer science major, started with Knights of the Turntable last semester and was inspired by seeing the DJ’s at different school events. Knights of the Turntable is an affiliate of KORT that provides music for the school’s live events and can also be booked for independent student-run events, according to KnightConnect.
“A few weeks ago we did the Spirit Splash and got the crowd hyped for what I’d say is the biggest tradition for the school,” Nguyen said. “In a couple weeks we are doing Knight-Thon which is like UCF’s biggest charity event. There’s only so much you can get involved in if you just go to classes.”
Attendees of the Karnival got early access to nomination forms for the impact awards — KORT’s monthly award given out to a registered student organization during fall and spring semesters. Winners receive recognition in the form of a certificate of excellence, recognition across KORT social media and a photo display within OSI.
“It’s a good de-stress from midterms happening and all the things going on [in the world],” Marin said. “Before I got involved in this, it was very much like ‘I’m just coming here to do my classes and leave.’ Events that we put on allow people to stop, look around and just see another aspect of college.”
The event also featured an assortment of bounce houses and a gladiator fighting arena where students could battle it out against one another.
A study done at UCF in 2017 by Daniel Kleiman, a former executive director of UCF Homecoming, explored if there was a link between campus engagement and positive measurable student outcomes. The study defines measurable positive outcomes as “outcomes of self-esteem, college self-efficacy, college affiliation, and levels of optimism/pessimism”.
“The majority of the results aligned with the study hypothesis by displaying significant positive correlations between the Campus Presence Scale and the sub-scale measurements of self-esteem, college self-efficacy, college affiliation and overall optimism,” according to the study. “Findings also supported the hypothesis by exhibiting significant positive correlations between presence and campus engagement variables.”
The environment’s positivity cannot be understated as students and their friends enjoyed the free refreshments along with the live entertainment from both DJ Wen and the baby goats.
Knights of the Roundtable partnered with Alaska Farms Orlando to host a petting zoo at the “Karnival” at Memory Hall on Tuesday.
Joseph Wiedeman
Senior English creative writing major Nova Bravo, second-year biomedical sciences major Jake Pewitt and second-year game design major Shia Peachy all agreed they were out there for the baby goats.
Bravo believes these events lead to some of the best memories at the university.
“At events like these, you come across people you would have never crossed paths with. You find people who are probably on the other side of campus most of the time,” Bravo said. “Then after, you’ll cross paths and you’ll be like oh my god how are you just because of the memories.”
Angely Tolani, the RSO coordinator for KORT, watched some of these memories forming at the bounce house. She believes students deserve a little break and wanted KORT to provide that opportunity during midterms.
“As an international student myself, back a couple of years ago, I saw the importance of getting involved because I came here with nothing, knew no one, no experience or resume,” Tolani said. “As soon as I got involved with the campus activities board is when I started getting real professional experience so it’s just a really crucial step for students outside the classroom.”