Abuzz with captivating performances, sign-up sheets and candy recruiting tactics, the Main Green welcomed first-year and returning students to its biannual Activities Fair this Thursday.
“The freshmen are always abundant with curiosity,” said Manan Pancholy ’27, who helped staff the Brown Barsaat table. “That’s the beauty of the club fair — to see what the pulse of the freshman class is.”
Each semester, some of the 423 undergraduate student groups on campus employ creative tactics to attract students’ attention. Some clubs used reliable crowd-pleasers like music and treats.
Pancholy pointed to the South Asian music playing on Barsaat’s speaker, while Ben Bradley ’26 of the AI Safety Team admitted that “cookies help.”
Last year, Bradley worked the table of the Brown Derbies, an a cappella group, and noted that the group of first-year students were a bit shier when approaching the Derbies’ table.
Other clubs used more unconventional methods for recruiting new members.
“I invented pirate games!” boasted Jeffrey “Rabies the Regularly Bitten” Pogue ’27 of ARRR!!!, a pirate-themed a cappella group, who urged passersby to compete for enticing but undefined prizes. The challenges included chugging saltwater, beating an ex-military member of their crew in an arm wrestle and snatching the item of highest monetary value from another group at the fair.
“There’s definitely a lot of freshmen whom we’ve intrigued,” said Minne “Odessa the Observant” Hatchuel ’27.
Pogue described pirates as “a self-selecting group,” as “there’s a very specific type of person who would love being a pirate.”
“I’ve been told by a lot of people that they wrote about (ARRR!!!) in their Brown application essay,” he added.
Pogue also pointed out the perks of being a pirate, claiming that a club member secured a job working on a tall ship this summer thanks to “piracy” being one of their college clubs.
The Activities Fair also presented an opportunity for first-year and returning students to make new connections.
“I met a kid whose name is Austin, and he was born in Dallas,” said Jason Shan ’27 of 180 Degrees Consulting when asked about the most memorable interaction he had that day.
“And I’m from Houston,” he added.
But with hundreds of students coming through the fair, first-year students found pros and cons.
“I really liked that there (are) a lot of options to choose from,” Ina Chen ’29 said. “It’s really exciting and pretty overwhelming too.”
After the slew of Google Forms and QR codes, many new Brunonians will be putting their fresh brown.edu emails to use.
“My inbox is going to be flooded,” Ahaan Mehta ’29 said.
