Red carpet ceremony honors student involvement

A red carpet rolled out to welcome the 350 to 400 students streaming in to win their award or congratulate friends that attended the Night in the Life, an annual event celebrating student achievements hosted by Student Life (SL) at the Monarch Event Center, on Friday March 24.

The front room was a reception area with platters of food and a bar serving mocktails. Through a foyer was the awards room and stage. Cheryl Richard, Director of SL, with help, created this event.

"I wanted an opportunity to acknowledge the students' accomplishments and growth but also give them a stage to celebrate themselves," Richard said.

The reception at 6 p.m. started with refreshments, followed by the awards ceremony, and after parties until 11 p.m. with live musical performances.

"To have people tell us now that they can't register because it's full is amazing," Dot Dearinger, Rio Grande Student Life Assistant said.

Dress was formal this year while in the past it was more casual, and for the first time registration was online.

"I was real excited when I looked at some of the pictures of the event to see the diversity of the types of students we had there: young, old, black, white, brown, and yellow. I thought that was fabulous. I thought everything was fabulous...I loved it," Richard said.

There are seven Student Life assistants called "The A-Team" who meet regularly to plan annual SL events, and they lobby their coordinator, Toniette Haynes Robinson to be assigned to lead these events. Amy Paul, Cypress Creek SL Assistant, was the 2009 Night in the Life lead.

"We are all very different; we all are our own personalities, but we managed to pull it all together," Paul said.

Richard viewed Night in the Life as part of why SL continues to be an active part of both staff and student lives.

"The students I talk to don't come in here [to SL] saying 'aww I don't know if I can make it.' They come in here with dreams. Now sometimes they don't know if they can get to the next place, but it is so neat to be surrounded by that positive energy."

Be the first to comment on this article!

Add comment


I am not posting spam. I understand posting spam or other comments that are unrelated to this article will cause my comment to be flagged for deletion and possibly cause my IP address to be permanently banned from this server.

Enter the characters in the image above:

log out