As the school year almost comes to an end, the Student Program Board (SPB) put on a fun and unique event for students to attend — Retro Roller Rink. The event took place on Tuesday, March 29 in the Oakland Center Banquet Rooms at 7 p.m. 

During the event skates were provided, there was a DJ from WXOU and food provided. 

“A lot of students enjoyed it, it was just an amazing atmosphere, there was music and skating,” Kaleigh Belz, Annual Events Director at SPB said. “It tends to be a very social event which is always nice for students to relax and hang out.” 

This event was a collaboration with the Greek Council because this past week was Greek Week at Oakland University (OU). The Greek Council put on events every day last week towards the Fraternity and Sorority Life democratic, but since SPB was already planning on doing this event last week, they teamed up.

“We wanted to be able to help one expand their audience and just reach a broader pool of students during the week of already full events,” Belz said. “We weren’t necessarily competing against each other but rather collaborating with them.”

To bring the roller rink event to life, SPB worked with a vendor to bring in all the rental roller skates as well as an artificial floor for the banquet rooms.

“We work with a lot of different vendors, and we were initially playing around with the idea of trying to do an artificial ice rink, but that didn’t end up being available,” Belz said.

The vendor then recommended a roller skating rink, and SPB saw this as an opportunity to have a more unique event this close to the end of the year.

Throughout the course of the event there were about 200 students that showed up to the event. With the event happening on a Tuesday, SPB was hoping students that were already on campus would just be able to stay for the event. Instead of having it on a Friday or Saturday where typically there’s less students on campus and students having to make their way to campus for the day.

“Similar events happen during the week because students stay on campus for them because we’re such a large commuter campus it’s hard to pull back students for an event on a weekend,” Belz said. 

SPB still has a couple events left for the end of the semester. They have Expo of the Mind, which will be held on April 12 in the Habitat. This event is a mental health event and will discuss why mental health is so important and how to deal with stress.

Another event SPB is holding in April is Zuzu Acrobats on April 14 in the Habitat. This event will have Zuzu African acrobats performing.