By Damon Cook
Since 2021 students, staff and many others get together to celebrate the Colorado State University journalism department. This celebration is known as Clarkchella. On Friday Sept. 29 people gathered outside of Andrew G. Clark hall, the main building of the journalism department, to kick off the celebration of 2022.
Clarkchella truly embodies the journalism department at CSU. Everyone at Clarkchella had a smile on their face and was just full of energy. Andrea Pennington is a fourth year journalism and media communications student at CSU. She has been a part of Clarkchella for both years. She talked about how much fun Clarkchella was and how much she enjoyed being a part of it.
“I think its fun to celebrate the journalism department” Pennington said “we are such a tight knit group, especially with our professors.”
Not only did Pennington have high praises for the department as a whole, which she admitted was probably a little bit biased, she really highlighted what Clarkchella is really about.
“Be able to meet fellow minded students and clubs, which you might not have heard of before.” Pennington said.
Clarkchella hosted several different stands of clubs and different organizations that students could potentially take advantage of to potentially advance their studies, join a club of people who have similar interests and even get potential internships. Some of the clubs at the event included: Rocky Mountain Student Media, Colorado Community News, graduate programs and several other programs in which students could talk to.
Clarkchella is not just a place for business, there are also several other aspects and activities that go on at the event. Some of the activities included filling out a punch card that was given to people at the beginning of Clarkchella, which students had to fill out if they wanted to get ice cream at the end. One other activity was the one to kick off Clarkchella which was a meditation circle.
One of the most notorious creatures that resides on a college campus is a squirrel. So why would Clarkchella have any other mascot? Most of the booths featured the mascot, either in one of their games, or some of their table decorations.
Jill Mott is one of the event coordinators, or the “space lounge coordinator,” which is what she said her official title was for the event. Mott mentioned that one of the big pros to Clarkchella was that it allowed transfer students to get out and meet their professors and classmates in which they may have not otherwise been able to without the event.
In Dec. 2018, Rodger Sherman tweeted out asking, “did people assert that your school’s squirrels were, in some way, different from most squirrels.” there were a lot of people that believed that the squirrels on their campus. Buzzfeed posted a thread about the tweet and the responses.
“They can be kind of mean and they can be kind of crazy.” Mott said, “I don’t know if all squirrels are like that, but ours are.”
Maybe the squirrels at CSU have a different personality than that of squirrels at other universities, or maybe they don’t. Regardless, the squirrels of Clarkchella are certainly something to watch out for. Mott mentioned something about an alien and a squirrel, but also said she could not speculate too much and to stay tuned for Clarkchella 3.0 to find out.
Reach Damon on Twitter @dwcook2001
Damon Cook 