ALT Nights

By Kassie Kirsch

ALT 4 is coming up this Friday night. It will feature the movie Ralph Breaks the Internet, which is newly released digitally this month, as well as five food trucks, including Young’s Jersey Dairy, The Christian Bros Meat Company, Cupzilla, The Flying Pepper and Pitabilities. The decorations include the lights strung in the upper SSC, which are set to flicker on and off, so they “glitch” like the internet in the movie.

“ALT Nights,” or The Alternative, are intended to be an alternative for students to spending money or going off campus. ALT Nights were started about eight years ago, after the Campus Experience Office began investigating what students were doing during weekends.

Students would go out to a movie or to a restaurant, spending an average of $20 while off-campus. So the Student Life Office created ALT Nights to give students something entertaining and free to do on campus on some weekends. Today there are on average, about a thousand Cedarville students attending the ALT Nights, which occur about five times a year on Friday or Saturday nights.

The themes are selected by a team of Student Center Activity Board (SCAB) students, who choose movies and plan activities that will fulfill students’ wants and needs, and ultimately will bring students together.

Brian Burns, Campus Experience, works with that team of SCAB students to make sure that ALT Nights are a fun event for the entire campus to attend.

“We are really trying to put our [SCAB] students, when they are planning, in the minds and the hearts of the students they are planning for,” Burns said, “because I don’t want to entertain, I want to give [students] an experience.”

The SCAB Team and Campus Experience work to make sure that all ages and groups of students are satisfied with the ALT Nights, even if they only attend for one aspect of the event. The food trucks are there for the people who won’t necessarily want to see the movie, and the games and discount on Rinnova products is also there for the same reason. Anyone who goes to any part of the ALT Night, even if it is only that part, is participating in the ALT Night and having that experience.

Once the movie and theme are chosen, SCAB moves into the planning process, diagramming what the lights and other decorations are going to be. Shortly before the ALT Night, the student workers begin the physical setup process begins to add the mood.

Abbigail Carraher, a sophmore education major, is a member of the SCAB Board.    “The SCAB Team… [determines how] the general atmosphere would feel, with the music, is it more upbeat or more toned down, the lights are more crazy or toned down, depending.” Carraher said

Another purpose of ALT Nights to encourage students to take the money they saved, instead of going out, and give it to their local church.

“We feel like it is a good event … not just with the purpose of saving you money, but the purpose of now we saved you money, so if you can, give back some other place.” Burns said.

Kassie Kirsch is a junior English major and a staff writer for off-campus news. She loves the outdoors, animals of all kinds, and reading more books than she should.