Morning rain extinguishes annual FallFest

Plans for a festive welcome back were dampened Sunday when UNC’s FallFest was canceled due to rainy weather.

Don Luse, director of the Carolina Union, said the conditions would have been unsafe for both those working the event and attendees.

“We have electrical power that has to be run, so for the safety of the people doing this setup and for participants, we have to be really careful about that,” Luse said.

While the main event was called off, a series of smaller events will be held in the near future to provide students with the same opportunities to get involved on campus.

Lauren Sacks, assistant director of student learning at the Student Union, said organizers will be meeting on Tuesday to discuss plans to hold an event that would allow student groups to attract new members.

“It won’t be on quite as grand of a scale as FallFest, obviously, but we’re looking into a similar event that would allow groups to showcase themselves,” Sacks said.

The event could be held in the Great Hall of the Union, the Pit or on Hooker Fields, depending on staff and location availability.

FallFest was canceled around 1 p.m., eight hours before the scheduled start time, in order to prevent out-of-town vendors from making the trip, Sacks said. It is only the second time in 16 years that the event has been canceled.

“We were able to cancel the giant inflatables and a huge amount of labor,” Luse said. He added that FallFest cost $54,000 last year.

Sacks said many of the vendors were notified early enough to save money from food preparation, but organizers don’t yet know how much money they were able to recoup.

A number of vendors and University departments will be in the Pit today from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. distributing the products they would have given out at FallFest, Luse said.

In addition, Larry Hicks, director of housing and residential education, said various food vendors including Jimmy John’s, Cosmic Cantina and Panera Bread gave out free food that was originally intended for FallFest at Hinton James, Ehringhaus, Craige and Granville Towers Sunday night.

“We want to create some sort of opportunity for students to get to know their community, specifically the first-years, and while we can’t do that for the whole community like FallFest, we wanted to have an alternative in the residence communities,” Hicks said.

While the rescheduling will attempt to fill the gap for many freshmen, many still feel that it won’t be the same.

Freshman Dave Dwight said he had hoped to learn about student groups at FallFest.

“Now, I’ll have to do a lot more of that work by myself,” he said.

While Sacks is confident that the student groups will be able to find a way to reach out to potential members, she is also disappointed about missing out on FallFest.

“I am sad that we won’t have it this year,” she said. “It really is a hallmark of starting back at Carolina, but I’m sure that people will still find out about the student groups.”

Contact the desk editor at university@dailytarheel.com.