After decreasing attendance at Café Procrastiné, a Villa Maria Hall Thursday night tradition, the hall council has decided to hold the event less frequently.
It’s going to be easier to get work done on Thursday nights in Villa Maria Hall as the chaos of loud music and students dancing at Café Procrastiné won’t be a weekly activity.
After the number of participants at Café Procrastiné began dwindling last year, the event changed from weekly to every other week last Christmas. This year it’s been cut back even further to provide more funds for other hall activities.
Café Procrastiné is a Villa Maria event that serves free Italian sodas to all students who bring their own cups.
“The intent for Café is to provide Villa, and thereby in extension the rest of the quad, a social event on Thursday nights,” Villa Maria Hall Director Danny Zimmerman said. “A lot of times (Thursday nights are) a dead time on campus where students are wrapping up their work for the week or deciding to skip it all together. It was originally designed as a cool social event.”
At the beginning of the year Zimmerman presented the budget for hall events to the Villa Maria hall council. The hall council decided the money for Café could be used for other hall events because the overall turnout for the event last year wasn’t as high as they wanted. They decided to go from every other week to around six to eight times a semester.
“Last year we realized we weren’t getting as many people to Café as we wanted and it was costing a lot of money,” Zimmerman said.
With having fewer Cafés, Villa Maria hopes to bring more students to the event.
“We want to make them more impactful,” senior Villa Maria RA Stan Thompson said. “If we had them every week, attendance kind of fades. We want them to be special. Basically, less is more.”
With this mindset, Cafe Procrastiné is going for quality rather than quantity.
“(The hall council wants) to do it, big and they want to do it well,” Zimmerman said. “If they could do fewer but spend more time planning it and spend more money on it per each Café, they can do it big, have a lot more people show up and have a lot more fun.”
With the idea of making Café a bigger event, Villa Maria hopes to provide live music in the future.
Their attempts at a larger event seem to be working. The first Café Procrastiné at the beginning of the year was a huge success.
“We had an audience of about 330 people, which easily is the most we’ve ever had,” Café Commissioner and junior David Rinella said.
They had to shut down early because they ran out of supplies.
Last week’s Café also had a large turn out.
“(Tonight) I’ve personally served over 30 people,” Rinella said.
As Cafe Procrastiné has gained more popularity, many students think Villa Maria should host more of them.
“I think that there should be more Café Procrastinés because it’s fun to meet new people,” freshman Gabe Kerr said. “It’s hard to not have had fun. Everyone wants to include you on the good time.”
Freshmen Matthew Nelson agrees.
“It was a good way to distract yourself, I think there should be more,” Nelson said.
