Serendipity, the week-long event held by the Campus Activities Board (CAB) every Spring at Guilford College, happened from Monday, March 23, through Friday, March 27 this year.
CAB, a student-run organization, is led by three students, one of whom is a junior: Peyton Colvin.
“The majority of the big campus-wide events, and just connecting everybody, are all hosted by CAB, like we’ll have Fall Fest and Serendipity,” Colvin said.
She explained that she “got involved in CAB last year when [she] started sitting [in on] meetings when they would talk about Serendipity planning and then just integrated as a member of the board.”
Colvin said that helping host these events “has been a really good way to meet new people and really be involved on campus.”
Serendipity is usually one of the “biggest events of the year, which is where [the] majority of the money goes,” Colvin said.
She said that “the primary focus of [Serendipity] is community engagement.” If students are looking to “get out of your dorms and meet people,” this is the event to do so, according to Colvin.
“Some people use it to get their volunteer hours up,” Colvin said, and others use it to do things they “don’t normally get to do.”
This year’s Serendipity had a one-day event on Wednesday, March 25th, and evening events on the remaining days of the week. The exact events being conducted were revealed the week of spring break: “Campus Combat,” “Indoor Recess,” “Boot Scoot & Boogie,” “Skate Night,” and “Art on the Quad.” Serendipity is “free for all students [and] usually… one or two of the events will have a food truck,” Colvin said.
Colvin said that naming the spring event at Guilford College “Serendipity” is “a tradition type of thing.” According to Oxford Languages, the word serendipity means “the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.”
“I know that I’m going to go back to last year [when] we had an interview with alumni who started this tradition,” Colvin said. She plans on resharing this video from YouTube, which she encourages people to tune into if they are interested in learning about Serendipity’s history.
When asked about Serendipity, Ty Pearson, a senior at Guilford College, said, “I’ve heard of it, but I’m not quite familiar.” Although Pearson has never attended the event himself, he said he might have “one or two Guilford friends that have been.”
Another Guilford senior, Kitana Corbett, said she had attended Serendipity before and thought “it was fun, and it was a way to celebrate [the semester being close to over].”
However, Corbett went on to say that “the event has definitely changed, and the scope of what they can offer to students.”
During Corbett’s freshman year, she said Serendipity was “more lively, and there were a lot more events.” Conversely, last year, as a result of the College’s fiscal circumstances, Corbett believed that CAB couldn’t “do as much for students.”
Corbett had plans to attend the Serendipity event this year and hoped, now that all the financial issues with Guilford College have been resolved, that “CAB can make their events as good as they were my freshman year.”
This year, as a member of CAB, Colvin encouraged other students to volunteer at Serendipity. She said students should reach out to her or Lisa Cook if they are interested in being involved.
