The Student Activity Board’s Labor Day trips proved to be a worthwhile undertaking, according to its members.
On Labor Day, the SAB sponsored free trips to Ocean City, New Jersey and Philadelphia’s South Street. They were also going to sponsor a trip to the Philadelphia Zoo but canceled the trip when nobody signed up.
“[We do the Labor Day trips] in order to provide off-campus events for the holiday, especially for the freshmen, and in order to get the freshmen to know the area more,” junior Jean Komline said.
Komline was the SAB member in charge of organizing the trips. She, along with fellow member, junior Taylor Talley and assistant director of SAB, Brian Crawford, drove the vans to Ocean City.
Shannon Hartsock, director of SAB, and junior member Erin Welding drove the vans to South Street.
“We do it to give students something fun to do in case they don’t have a car or they live far from home,” Hartsock said. “We want to give them something free or at least at a relatively low cost.”
Crawford added that the trips were an incentive to keep students on campus.
“It’s fun to get out of the dorm for a while,” first-year Janelle Boyd said. “I think it’s a good time to bond with hall mates.”
Boyd was one of 30 people who went to Ocean City. A few of the things she and her hall mate, sophomore Katie Tricarico, did on the boardwalk included getting henna tattoos and buying hermit crabs.
Ocean City gave students a chance to swim, shop or just hang out on the beach and the boardwalk. The boardwalk is also lined with shops selling a plethora of greasy, fattening foods like hot dogs, french fries, deep fried Oreos and chocolate chip funnel cakes.
“I was excited about the idea of chocolate chip funnel cake,” Crawford said. The experience was somewhat of a disappointment to him because the chocolate chips were added on top of the funnel cake and were not mixed in with the batter.
“It was still quite tasty, but it was not quite all that I had hoped for,” he said.
The 20 people who went to South Street found a variety of things to do as well, like having cheesesteaks from Jim’s Steaks or shopping at one of the stores having a big sale. Some students read a book at Penn’s Landing or simply did some people-watching.
According to Hartsock, it was a great time to be on South Street because there were not a lot of people there.
“It was a lot of fun. Come to them next year,” Hartsock encouraged.