Reeve Union Board (RUB) hosted the 2023 Winter Carnival for organizations on campus to compete in fun activities from March 8-10.
The teams were made up of students in Greek organizations and residence halls that competed to win the Jerry Bloesl Cup, who was an adviser for RUB for 30 years. 

Winter Carnival was formatted differently than in past years, with events compressed into three days vs. the normal week.The events included broomball, tug of war, indoor snowball fights, can-struction, a banner competition, and ended last Friday with Titan Nights and Zach’s Bingo Hall. 

The winners this year were the team of fraternity Beta Theta Pi and sororities Sigma Sigma Sigma and Gamma Alpha Omega. 

Mason Struttman, who is special events coordinator for RUB’s executive board, helped plan most of the events and believed they went well this year.

“Winter Carnival 2023 was a great success,” he said. “Everyone who attended had fun at our events.”

The standout event this year was broomball, a new event to the winter carnival.

“The event that brought the most energy was broomball,” Struttman said. “Players would cheer on their teammates from the sidelines.” 

The shortened schedule also went well. “It was a perfect balance of not too short, but not too long so the students would stay eager to participate.”

Struttman said the reason for this change in format and length was to benefit the students and their time.

“We decided to shorten Winter Carnival because we have noticed a general decrease in student participation and eagerness to participate in the events in the past few years with the longer format,” he said. 

As a whole, RUB thought the event went well considering the planning and turnout from the student body.

“Planning went smoothly and had no problems,” Struttmann said. “We had a lot of students come to all our events to participate.”

After how well the new format went this year, there is also a plan to format it differently again next year, said Dylan Bram, RUB adviser. 

“We do have plans to readjust Winter Carnival for next year, by taking the event, partnering up with other campus entities, and making it a one-day event, full of activities for all students,” he said. 

Winter Carnival will still hold the same events and energy had from past years with the new format for next year.
“Competitions and games will still be part of the event, but it will be more of a one-day extravaganza, as compared to smaller events throughout the week,” Bram said.