A rave, like any party, is a good time to be free and not care for a second about what you need to do or where you need to be. For an hour or so, it's only you, your glow sticks and the beaming strobe lights. In the background are your friends and everybody else having a good time and the booming music that scrambles your brain and reassembles your atoms as pure, glowing awesomeness.
After the success of Lancer Productions' Highlighter party, the rave came to students via WMLU on Nov. 17, 2010, from 10 p.m. to 12 a.m. The tickets cost $5 each, and dropped to $3 with the addition of a canned good and $1 with two canned goods. Money gathered at the event funded WMLU's growing list of supplies and canned goods went to FACES.
By the end of the night, Jessie Page, one of the event's key organizers, said that the head count had reached 30-40 people in the ABC rooms, one of which had to be closed off, and the total funds were around $85. A full box of canned goods was donated to FACES.
Overall, the night was a good first step into something new for WMLU and will help the organization's plans to grow on campus. WMLU board member Jacob Biggs, involved with the event by putting up posters in Dorrill Dining Hall, gave a shout out to " Tyler Quentin, Zach Jackson, and Patrick Johnson for doing the remote on [the WMLU Rave]." Biggs also said the event's "planning revolved around [WMLU's] publicity department [headed by] Jessie Page."
Page, as the project's facilitator, related the difficulty of getting reservations, and her and the station's intent to have the next WMLU rave "[be] completely for charity." "We're going to use our music, our equipment, to help somebody else," said Page. Page was involved in many areas of setting up the rave, "from brainstorming how [WMLU] could do it, to reserving the rooms, putting up decorations, selling tickets, [and doing] all of the paperwork." However, she said the project was more the brainchild of Chuck Wongus and Bryan Roethel.
Bryan Roethel, who was also overseeing the success of the rave, said that he and Wongus first planned the event as " a battle of the bands fundraiser," based on "cuts from [WMLU] funding for band compensations." Spreading the word of the event while Page and others set in place its fine details, Roethel talked to both pan-hellenic fraternity and sorority organizations. Other important figures in gathering support for the WMLU rave were Billy Boulden, Susan Sullivan, Ashley Russell (doing a regular hoop performance), and the wider Facebook community.
Roethel also revealed that this was the "first time the station in general has embraced the idea of a rave," and, based on how new the experience was, "would be happy [even with] a minimal turnout." In the end, the event, and the number of people who came, "would show [WMLU] what [they] needed to do to plan for and make this a bigger and better event next year."
In the end, Roethel said WMLU doesn't " want to rival Lancer Productions for being able to bring social events on campus, but we definitely want to get involved in that process, we want people to come out and have a good time, and just have fun with [their] friends. We want to be the ones that do that. We want WMLU and our music to be like a driving force for Longwood University as a whole. Just [so they can] come together, have fun and be a complete Lancer Family."
Thanks for the event went out to APO for helping to "donate equipment, [and all of the people who] donated their time and effort to us. We're eternally grateful for that."
