On Thursday, April 23rd at 9 p.m., the University of Connecticut’s Department of Student Activities hosted a bingo night at the Union Mall. The event was a part of the Student Activities’ Spring Weekend campaign and featured various prizes for the winning students in each round.
The event ran for eight rounds with increasingly difficult bingo patterns each round, with the last round being a race to fill in every square of the bingo board.
“Spring Weekend’s main idea is to just allow the students to have fun, free, accessible activities during this hard time during the semester where it’s right before finals, right before classes ends,” said Julia Pheifer, a student facilities monitoring assistant in Student Activities. Pheifer is a sixth-semester molecular and cellular biology major and has been the announcer at Spring Weekend’s bingo night since her freshman year.
The event had several large tables set up under a massive white tent on the Union Mall, but by the end of the night groups of students joining late filled in the nearby area with lawn chairs from the surrounding field.
“The event was great, everyone was chanting what number they wanted, cheering when I called a good number or bad number,” said Pheifer.
The prize pool for the event included earbuds, phone chargers, a variety of gift cards and a LEGO Batman set. Only the first three winners to reach the stage for each round could choose a prize from the collection, leading to several mad dashes during the event for the best prizes.
“Yeah, it was a little chaotic today just because we realized the bingo boards were a little messed up probably halfway through the event, but otherwise, like, I always love chaos.” said Pheifer.
Despite the chaos, Pheifer also said the event allowed “students to de-stress, just hang out with friends, chat, meet new people, and that’s what we’re all about here in student activities; the main part of this is community.”
Bingo was the last Spring Weekend event held on April 23, but similar events were held beforehand.
“Before this we had a capella group M-pact come, tomorrow we have the comedy show, we have trivia, cookie decorating — there’s just so many different activities you wouldn’t normally see on campus being brought to campus for Spring Weekend,” said Pheifer.
Spring Weekend takes place each year before the last week of school and is run primarily by Student Activities with collaboration from SUBOG. Spring Weekend featured events including laser tag, OOzeball, late night snack options and the annual SUBOG comedy show, featuring Michael Blaustein and Trevor Wallace.
The end of Spring Weekend marks the end of most events for the 2026-27 school year, though lawn chairs and the white tent will stay out for students to enjoy.
“Shoutout [to] Student Activities for planning this, it takes a lot of hard work, specifically Eric Bouchard, who puts on Spring Weekend, he has been planning this for months and months and to see it come to life has been amazing, I just love that we can provide for the students in this way that allows them to express themselves,” said Pheifer.