Wilkes Student Government announced ‘90s Nickelodeon Cartoons as this year’s Winter Weekend theme last week.
Nickelodeon Cartoons won the popular vote over Pokemon, Youtube Sensations, As Seen on TV Infomercials and Wildlife.
Junior P-1 Pharmacy major Kristofer Rivers, who is in charge of coordinating the festivities this year, said voting was not a close race.
“Nickelodeon blew all other competitors out of the water,” Rivers said. “Within a day of voting, they were by far the majority.”
Winter Weekend is an event where Wilkes students form teams to compete in various activities such as relay races, best banner, most spirit award, a photo scavenger hunt and ends with trivia. Since ‘90s Nickelodeon Cartoons was picked by the students, teams will then pick within that theme what kind of team they would want to form. The teams would then submit logos and a slogan to SG who supply each team with T-shirts.
Some of the cartoons chosen include “Rugrats,” “Angry Beavers,” “Ahh! Real Monsters,” “Hey Arnold,” “Wild Thornberry’s,” “Blue’s Clues,” “Rocket Power,” “Doug” and “CatDog.” The groups competing range from a variety of places like the Frisbee Team, Chemistry Club, History Club, Cheerleading, men’s soccer, softball team, Evans Hall 4th Floor and University Towers 2nd Floor.
The first night of competition consists of a banner, team slogan and a mascot competition that based on the Nickelodeon cartoon. After scoring from the judges, the traditional photo scavenger hunt ensues across the Wilkes campus.
Rivers plans on keeping the first night traditional, but will incorporate athletic events back due to popular demand and even will use some classic Nickelodeon.
“We’re bringing back more athletic events like volleyball and knockout,” Rivers said. “With the Nickelodeon theme, we are trying to incorporate events and things we would’ve seen in on TV into that event. There’s potential that we might be bringing slime into the events.”
The second night consists of games on the Greenway or UCOM depending on the weather. Games range from sporting events, relay races and different “minute to win it” games.
Rivers emphasized that the addition of athletic events would not provide an unfair advantage to more athletic groups.
“We have a cheerleader team which consists of all girls and teams like guy’s soccer team,” Rivers said. “Some of the events might be athletic based, but there will be strategic based ones as well.”
From there, the teams will be moved to the ballroom for five rounds of Nickelodeon trivia with a “Final Jeopardy-esque” ending where the teams can wager their scores in a double-or-nothing scenario.
That scenario is exactly how last year’s finish played out says Garrett Schrader, captain of the 2011 Winter Weekend Champion Team Cars.
“It came down to that and we bet enough for us to win,” Scharader, a history and secondary education major, said. “I’ve been on the past two winning teams. We want to keep that tradition alive.”
Rivers looks to bring back the community service aspect of the event with a canned food drives. The cans will serve a purpose in scoring as well as being used as a token.
“A certain number of cans will give your team ‘X’ number of points,” Rivers said. “Cans will also be like life tokens. A can might be able to be substituted for a missed picture in the photo scavenger hunt.”
Last year, 11 teams and 127 students participated. This year, Rivers hopes to eclipse that number with a goal of 15 teams by extending the deadline to the first week of February.
To enter a team, send an email to [email protected] with a choice cartoon in mind.