By Maya Fenter, The Miami Student
I hear it before I see it.
My RA and a group of people from our corridor have just finished dinner at Harris Dining Hall and are walking to Mega Fair together. As we approach Central Quad, our conversations are gradually drowned out by an upbeat, bass-heavy remix of a popular pop song blaring through the quad and the collective buzz of hundreds of simultaneous conversations.
And then I see it.
The picturesque Central Quad -- the place I had previously only known as the backdrop of the iconic sundial photograph -- is now crowded with hundreds of tables, tri-fold posters and people. I stand there for a few moments to take everything in, my eyes wide.
I figured that it was called "Mega Fair" for a reason, but that reason was not apparent to me until now.
"Let's stick together," one of my friends from my hall says, nudging my arm. I quickly nod, relieved that I won't have to navigate this alone.
We haven't even visited one table before a girl begins to make an announcement from the stage set up on one end of the quad. "Welcome to Mega Fair!" she exclaims, the speakers amplifying her voice, making it nearly impossible for us to hear anyone trying to talk to us.
We pass by tables trying to lure us in with free food and other goodies, and others with representatives trying to work the crowd. "Are you interested in making money?" one club's members ask us. The club doesn't interest me whatsoever, but the idea of making money is undoubtedly tempting.
Even more tempting, though, is the 4 Paws for Ability booth, which has a dog sitting in front of the table ready to be petted. Predictably, the canine draws much more attention than the human club members. While 4 Paws is another club I'm not particularly interested in joining, obviously, I have to stop to pet the dog. You can't just pass by a dog.
When I do find a student organization I'm interested in, business cards, flyers and a computer to collect my email and UniqueID are immediately thrust in my direction. "Just put your name down! It's OK if you don't end up joining!" the club members coax. Not knowing how else to escape, I fill out various clubs' spreadsheets with my information, thinking only about how many emails I'm going to receive later.
About halfway through our endeavor, a guy steps directly in front of us, stopping us in our tracks quite literally. "Are you pro-life?" he asks, trying to hand us a brochure for a pro-life club -- a very aggressive approach for such a sensitive subject. We offer him a tentative smile and shrink away.
Not too long after, we encounter tables offering free condoms, to which we also politely decline.
By chance, we run into another one of our friends from our hall. She asks us if we've seen the F-Word table, and we point in the general direction of where we thought we saw it. Clearly confused, she says, "That's OK, I'll just check the map."
"There's a map?" my friend and I ask in disbelief. Apparently they were handing them out at the entrances to the quad. That would have been helpful.
Later, I spot another girl with a dog. Seeing the dog with its tongue out and begging for attention, I figure that the owner is advocating for an animal shelter or a pre-vet club. "Are you interested in playing rugby?" she asks instead. I'm tilting my head, missing the connection between dogs and rugby, when two girls swarm to the dog, squealing, "Ohmigosh, can I pet him?!" (Again, it's impossible to pass by a dog.)
After weaving through almost all of the tables, seeing everything from Business in Space to Highland Pipes and Drums to Club Quidditch, my friend and I decide we are overwhelmed.
As we turn onto the sidewalk back to the dorm, carrying bags full of papers to sort through later, the girl onstage begins shouting again, announcing something about someone losing their ID card. As we get farther from the quad, the chaos fades back into a hum, disappearing altogether before we hear the girl announce the name of the owner of the missing ID.