If you’ve walked by Memory Mall on campus since Sunday afternoon, you have surely noticed a town of tents and groups of students enjoying the outdoors and each other. The event is called Tent City, and the cause is student unity.
Campus Peace Action, a student organization that strives to unite students at UCF, host Tent City on campus bi-annually. This semester the event ran from March 28 to April 3. Tent City drew in students from all walks of life to camp out and enjoy the variety of activities and musical performances that kept participants entertained throughout the week.
Activities included tie dieing shirts, a meditation workshop, a screen printing workshop, and local band performances every night. There were also several educational discussions that were lead by guest speakers such as Valerie King of the Office of Diversity Initiatives and representatives from United Students Against Sweatshops. University president John Hitt was the first guest speaker at Tent City.
The finale of all the fun was a Tent City Prom in honor of the birthday of Campus Peace Action’s president, Terri Baldwin, who was the leading coordinator of the week-long festivities.
According to Baldwin, the main purpose of Tent City this semester was to create an event that allowed students to meet new people, build new friendships, and start building dialogue about issues that affect the community as a whole.
“So many times in the past Tent Cities have been used for protesting and Campus Peace Action used to be right there with them,” Baldwin said. “Somewhere along the lines we realized that’s just polarizing people. That’s just making them choose; whereas, if you’re friends with someone you have that opportunity to have a dialogue with them and to tell them why you think what you think, and to hear them and maybe to come to an understanding…”
