This year’s “Jasper Days” was a far calmer than last year’s “Springfest” and that is exactly how administration intended it to be. This year’s festivities included a concert, dorm wars, a comedy show, a special mass, a performing arts concert, and a Yankees game.

This year’s “Jasper Days” was a far calmer than last year’s “Springfest” and that is exactly how administration intended it to be. This year’s festivities included a concert, dorm wars, a comedy show, a special mass, a performing arts concert, and a Yankees game.

“Overall, it was exactly what we envisioned it to be which is completely different than last year,” said Bennett.

Besides the Yankee game, all events were free for Manhattan College students.

The country concert ran from at 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Draddy Gymnasium. Brynn Marie and Chris Campbell opened for Kellie Pickler. John Bennett, Student Activities Director reports that over the course of the concert somewhere between 400 and 500 people were in attendance.

The concert was opened up to guests of Manhattan College students so that anyone on campus had the opportunity to attend. This last minute decision was tweeted to students through the MC Student Activities official twitter account, @MCStudAct.

“That [letting guests attend the concert] was something, genuinely, I was pushing for you guys and the students to let it be open and and that morning I was able to convince and speak with security about opening it to everybody,” Bennett said. “If they’re here, they might as well come to the appropriate events that are taking place on campus.”

Dorm Wars was an event held on the Quad from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. that students participate in to represent their dorm and compete with students from other dorms. While this event has been successful in the past, it fell though during Jasper Days weekend. T-shirts to commemorate the event were created and distributed for free.

Brooks Wheelan, SNL comedian, performed that night at 8 p.m. in Draddy Gymnasium. The comedy show was a hit. Bennett reports that the bleachers were packed.

Security was in full effect on Saturday.

“The weekend has become a big party weekend to be quite honest with you and we had to gear up for what occurred the year before and I think we did a really nice job of integrating the public safety with private security which we normally do for concerts but then it was kind of a team effort to so I want to make sure I state publicly that I really appreciate the residence life staff, particularly the RAs that took shifts all weekend long,” said Vice President for Student Life, Dr. Richard Saterlee.

On Sunday, at 12 p.m., there was a special Mission Month mass that honored all the people in our campus community who serve others throughout the school year. The event was held in the Chapel of De la Salle well attended, but an estimated number of attendees in unavailable.

Then, at 2 p.m., there was an MC Performing Arts concert held in the Chapel of De la Salle. This event also had a good turn out.

Both the mass and the concert were intended to bring many different people from our community together and celebrate the sense of community found on the Manhattan College campus.

The final Jasper Days event was a Yankees game at 8:05 p.m.. Many students attended.

Not all students had an enjoyable time during Jasper Days. Sophomore civil engineer major, Kevin Barraza, was disappointed with most of the events.

“I don’t actually think that it [Jasper Days] was a success. I didn’t actually go to the concert at all. I felt like no one was there. And, I don’t really like hat type of music so I didn’t go,” said Barraza. “I heard the comedian was good, but I think that dorm wars kind of fell though and I was kind of looking forward to that,” he said.

Sophomore chemical engineering major, William Casey, was not a fan of the concert either.

“Oh, I did not like it [Jasper days] at all. I went to the concert for five, ten minutes and left because hanging out in my room by myself would be more fun,” said Casey.

Junior computer science major Sean Curran spoke about his observations during the weekend.

“I wouldn’t quite call it [Jasper Days] a success. It seems that a lot of people weren’t happy with what was happening and not a lot of people went to the concert itself. I heard of a lot of people leaving campus,” junior computer science major Sean Curran.

But, Bennett had a different measure of success for the weekend.

“It is successful in that last year we had eight or nine hospital transports. This year we had none. […] So from a behavioral stand point on campus, it was much more successful” said Bennett.

Despite how calm the on-campus activities were, the off-campus gatherings were a cause for concern.

“We have some real concerns coming from the community and in my mind they’re valid and students need to be a part of the solution going forward,” said Satterlee.