Last Friday, Calvin added another first to their list of events: the first library sleepover. Students in the honors program were invited to spend the night in the library playing board games and disc golf, participating in a trivia contest and a scavenger hunt, enjoying delicious snack food (made possible by a chocolate fountain) and binge-watching “Sherlock” in the recreation reading center.

Lauren DeHaan, a student on the honors student council, proposed the sleepover idea during the first meeting this year.

“Everybody was excited about it,” said professor Bruce Berglund, head of the honors program.

Glenn Remelts, dean of the library, agreed: “I was in favor of it immediately.”

The charge of organizing the event fell to sophomore Abby Finnegan.

“I worked with professor Berglund, professor Wilstermann, Manda [the honors secretary] and Glenn Remelts from the library,” she said. “[Remelts] helped make sure that all of the staff of the library, campus safety and building services knew we were coming and that we would be okay to be in the library at those times. Each of those groups was very accommodating.”

“The honors program at Calvin is quite large. Last year over 400 students took honors courses,” said Berglund. “The problem, though, is how do you establish a sense a community among honors students? Activities like this are aimed at getting honors students together outside of their classes for things that still have an element of working your brain.”

“I’m hoping that the students were just able to have a good time and come together as honors students,” said Finnegan. “Our honors program here at Calvin is quite large. So it’s very easy to be a part of it but never get involved in it. I’m hoping that this brought some students together and made them feel like they are a part of the honors student community here on campus.”

“We had students from all different class levels,” said Berglund. “We had students who had honors classes together in their first year and now they’re seniors and they got to see each other again.”

First-year student Courtney Zonnefeld echoed this aspect of the night: “I liked being able to hang out with people from honors classes that I haven’t seen since last semester.”

The event was a hit with students such as Jack Kamps, one of the RAs on the honors floor in van Reken.

“It was super chill. The venue was really nice,” she said. “There were a lot of options of things to do.”

“One of my favorite parts was definitely the chocolate fountain,” said first-year student Kathryn Mae Post. “It was a savory and sweet surprise.”

“[The event] needs to happen more often,” said senior Landon Sterk.

The event was a success with 43 people who RSVP’d and at least 50 showing up. “We had a total of eight people stay the whole night,” Berglund said. “Most of them slept on the couches but there was one person who was sleeping under the carrels.”

The unsung heroes of the night were the maintenance workers who generously agreed to have 40-50 students running around while they were trying to clean.

For those who missed the sleepover but still want a taste of it, the library is hosting a disc golf tournament this Friday.