The colored dust has settled over the Texas Wesleyan campus mall after students celebrated the Holi Festival of Colors on Wednesday.
Cameron Bennett, a freshman computer science major, works for Student Life as an ambassador and was responsible for putting up fliers for Holi Festival of Colors, a Hindi festival celebrating the triumph of good over evil.
According to Bennett, Wesleyan has been planning the event that took place on the campus mall from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. for a month.
“My favorite part of the event was probably hitting people in the face with dust,” Bennett said. “Not like literally legitimately punching them in the face, but actually throwing the dust at them.”
Bennett said this year was his first time participating in a Holi Festival and he found it really interesting.
“Honestly I wasn’t sure I was going to do it today and then I got like sacked by like three different guys that had dust all over their faces,” Bennett said.
Bennett said he highly recommends everyone who missed the Holi Festival to come to the next annual festival.
“I enjoyed the fact that that happened and taking a bath is going to have a whole new meaning,” Bennett said.
Zahraa Saheb, a sophomore political science and English major and SGA Vice President also went to the Holi Festival.
“Based on talking with some of my Indian friends and reading about it before, Holi is an Indian festival celebrating an Indian sort of Asian cultures where the different colors have different meanings,” Saheb said.
Saheb said she works for Student Life, but was not involved in planning this year’s festival.
“It’s a fun community event where a lot of people get to participate and have fun,” said Saheb. “It’s a bonding experience.”
Saheb said the festival most commonly celebrated in India.
“I like the fact you make friends there,” Saheb said. “At first you’re targeting your friends, but then your circle gets bigger and bigger and you get to have fun with more people, people you don’t know.”
Saheb said she is really grateful for Student Life’s coordinator of international activities for planning events that like the Holi Festival.
“I know Wesleyan is very diverse,” Saheb said. “About 23 percent of our student body is international students, so keeping up with their culture and bringing that into Wesleyan is really awesome.”
Maggie Biggs-Scribner, a senior biology major and tutor of math and science in the Academic Success Center went to Holi Festival because she saw it posted on the Wesleyan calendar online.
“I’m the president of Tri Beta which is a biology honors society. We have this raffle we put together and we wanted to sell tickets.” Biggs-Scribner said. “We knew Holi was going on, so we decided to combine the both events.”
Biggs-Scribner has been a member of Tri Beta for two years, the overall goal of Tri Beta is to get undergraduate students involved in scientific research of any kind.
“My favorite part of Holi Fest is, when somebody is behind you and you’re unaware of it and you just get blasted with color,” said Biggs-Scribner. “It’s great especially now that we’re in this part of the semester where it’s just stress overload.”
