Calvin NiteLife dealt a full house last Saturday night, hosting poker, raffles, dancing and a DJ for the Wonderland Winter Formal at the Amway Grand Hotel.
About 330 students attended the “Alice in Wonderland”-themed event. Unlike the dance last semester at Frederik Meijer Gardens, this formal was ironically more casual, with girls donning mostly shorter dresses and sneakers.
Students packed the dance floor for nearly the entire night. Instead of hiring a DJ as Calvin has for dances in the past, Student Life recruited a Calvin student DJ, Casey Jones, who has been the DJ for several dorm dances and NiteLife’s New Year’s Party this past January.
“Casey does an amazing job and we really love working with him,” said Laura DeGroot, a junior student worker with Student Life.
Laura Steele, Keagan Johnson and Laura DeGroot of the Student Life Office organized the event, though interns Kenzie Krumm and Lauren Mixon, as well as their supervisors, also assisted with planning.
“For the most part, everything went as planned,” DeGroot said, “There is always a little bit of shuffling that has to be done with volunteers, decorations and support from the venue, but everyone worked together and it turned out to be an amazing event.”
Partnering with student senate for help with the poker tables and other games also helped the Student Life team make the formal flow smoothly.
“Many people also enjoyed the poker games that we had. The system we used for poker chips and raffle tickets worked out well, thanks to careful planning from Laura Steele and JB Britton,” said DeGroot. Each student was given 10 poker chips upon coming in. They could then use the chips in the games and win tickets to put in raffles. At the end of the night, there was a raffle drawing for for Starbucks, Subway, Steak ‘n Shake and a Visa card.
“The music was awesome!” said Kalyn Carley about the formal. “I’m glad that a bunch of people showed up from all different classes. All the activities were interesting and fun. I learned a lot about poker and roulette.”
