In the News
November 1, 2012 –
Bringing Sin City to Queen’s
This Saturday night’s Las Vegas-themed Science Formal at Queen’s University will showcase everything for which Sin City is famous.
There will be glitz and glamour and spectacular scenery.
The only thing missing is the gambling.
“We are not having any,” said Matthew Van Dyck, a fourth-year civil engineering student at Queen’s and the construction chairman for the event. “We had looked into it briefly and decided it was just too much of a hassle.”
The rules and regulations for holding any kind of gaming during the night were a major obstacle.
“We were concerned that we weren’t going to be able to do it legitimately and we didn’t want to get in any trouble,” Van Dyck said.
So they decided to make Grant Hall a gambling-free zone that night to offset the possibility of getting raided.
“That would not make for a good formal,” he said.
Even without the gambling, the annual formal should still showcase the same creativity that has made it one of the 10 best black-tie events in North America.
Work started at the beginning of the last school year when he hired construction managers from the graduating class, said Van Dyck.
“We started up late September of last year with our hiring and then we started planning the event.”
The theme is voted on by the graduating class. Ideas were submitted and an online vote picked the winner.
Members of the public can tour the finished results during an open house Saturday, Nov. 3 from 11 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. Entry is through a donation to the United Way. Last year $2,000 was raised.
The foyer to Grant Hall will be decorated as if the visitor is coming into the city from the desert, explained Van Dyck. Then each room in Kingston Hall, as well as the main room in Grant Hall, will resemble the inside of a hotel room or other main attraction in the city.
Grant Hall is being turned into the Treasure Island hotel, complete with a pirate ship.
Van Dyck said they wanted to come up with something that was both interesting to look at as well as interesting to build.
Every one of the 600 graduating students coming to the event must put in 40 hours of work on the formal, 10 of them in the final construction week.
“It’s quite a lot of time put in into the construction and the art,” he said.
The students work from 9 a.m. until 11 p.m. in a construction blitz the final week.
Van Dyck has a background in construction management through internships so chairing the formal “is right up my alley,” he said.
“It’s really fun. I love doing it.”
He said each year’s graduating class may try to outdo the last but “I don’t think it’s of the utmost importance that you’re better.”
“It’s just that it’s different from last year. It’s not the same idea. You want something new and something exciting every year.”
Source: Kingston Whig-Standard
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