On October 28 and 29, the University of Central Florida hosted the South Atlantic Affiliate of College and University Residence Halls (SAACURH) conference. There were about 600 delegates from over 70 universities in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. The conference was Disney themed because we were in Orlando, the “theme park capital of the world.” Being a Disney fan, this definitely made me more interested in attending the conference. We even decided to Disneybound as characters from Inside Out! (If you don’t know what that is, check out my article about it here.)

Us as characters from Inside Out - Disgust, Joy, Sadness (me), and Anger. Fear was still in the boardroom.

This was the first (and likely only) conference I attended in college. Being a senior, I only have the chance to go to maybe one or two more conferences for the rest of my senior year. As a first time delegate, SAACURH was a good first impression for a conference. The amount of chanting and cheering for schools was quite intense; banging on tables, standing on cheers, people even had full-sized school flags. Coming from a smaller school that doesn’t have a heavy focus on sports, we were kind of at a loss for a chant and even Google-searches weren’t helping us find anything. Luckily, we were able to let the other schools battle it out and didn’t need to find a cheer for our school.

I quickly learned a few things. One was a way to quiet any room. Someone yells “hey SAACURH!” and everyone yells back “hey, what?” and then stops talking. It quiets any room, even with yelling chants and cheers across a large ballroom with 600+ people. Another thing I learned quite quickly was the SAACURH cheer. It’s very simple; you spell out SAACURH and say then say “SAACURH” while clapping at a certain rhythm. I’m not musical enough to tell you what speed or tempo the beat was at but watch the video below and you’ll see what I mean. When you agree with someone while they’re talking, you snap your fingers to show you approve without being as loud and disruptive as applauding. There a “conference clap,” which is doing jazz hands until someone finishes talking and then you do a single clap and go back to jazz hands. Lastly, I learned how to do a standing ovation. Not quite the same as standing and clapping; you stand with your arms over your head in an O-shape (YMCA-style) and say “ooooooooh.” I learned all of this in the span of an hour or so, but it was interesting to say the least.

The final SAACURH chant of the conference, flags flying and everyone on their feet.

One of my favorite things I learned at conference was a quote from one of the women leading a session. It was a session about social media and she said “even if you think no one is listening, shout from the mountain top anyway because your voice will carry into caves you didn’t even know were there.” Now, I’m not an emotional person (at least not outwardly) and for some reason this nearly moved me to tears. I thought that was one of the greatest things I’ve ever heard someone say. It really resonated with me and one of my first thoughts was “I’m gonna put that on a canvas.” Thank you E’Monique for my new favorite quote.

There were a lot of great sessions to choose from but you could only go to four, so I chose mine very carefully. Of course I wanted to go to sessions that would help my residence hall association, but I also wanted to go to some for myself. The first one I went to was called “The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party” (remember the Disney theme) and its description was “you’re late, you’re late! You’ve got too much on your plate!” Just about anyone who knows me would probably agree with the description. As Ron Swanson said “don’t half-ass two things; full-ass one thing.” It won’t do any of my clubs or myself any good if I’m too busy and unable to fulfill duties if I’m stretched too thin. The duo from North Carolina State University did a great job reminding us that we don’t have to do everything ourselves and it’s important to take care of ourselves, in term of eating, sleeping and getting schoolwork done before any other commitment.

The next session I went to was the aforementioned social media session called “Leader(media)ship.” The girl leading it was really cool and she reminded me of someone who I still can’t put my finger on but I really liked her. She was very warm and inviting. There were only about half a dozen of us in this room so we all got to really give our thoughts and opinions. E’Monique was very open and honest and wanted us to use our voices strongly on social media. She said that even if our posts don’t reach the number we wanted to, it’s a ripple effect so more people than we realize will see our post or our message. I am definitely someone who watches my number and my residence hall association accounts’ numbers, both in likes and followers, and sometimes I get disappointed in a low following and very few likes on posts. One of my goals is to increase our association’s accounts following and numbers before I graduate in the spring.

The third session I went to was also for my association, like the second session and not so personal. This session was called “Hall Officer Training (HOT)” and was led by a University of Tennessee, Knoxville guy. One thing our association has struggled with is getting interest and retaining residence hall leaders. Three out of five of our delegates went to this session because we really want to grow ourselves before most of us graduate. Although the program wasn’t necessarily about advertising or retainment, he went over effective training that his university uses. I hope we’ll be able to implement this into our association and grow.

The last session I went to was more of a personal one and not particularly relevant to my association. It was led by two people from East Tennessee State University and was called “Peter Pan and Pocahontas and Microagressions, Oh My.” Although I’ve taken a class where we spent a day or two on Pocahontas and all that is wrong with it (aside from microaggression), I thought it would be fun to go and see if I could learn something new. We talked about the microaggression in Pocahontas, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Dumbo, The Jungle Book and The Princess and the Frog. To be honest, I didn’t really learn anything new; I already knew about microaggression in Disney movies, but I still really enjoyed it because it focused on Disney. There was a lot of snapping in agreement to what people were sharing about the movies and their own microaggression experiences, mostly related to ethnicity and gender.

After we finished the last session, they announced the top 20 programs who all did theirs one more time. Instead of going to a fifth session, most of my group sat out in the Florida sun and bonded. Once the top 20 were done, we got on buses back to our hotels and got ready for the closing ceremony and banquet back on campus. As a picky eater, dinner was actually pretty good and my vegetarian friend was able to eat without a struggle either so two thumbs up for that. The closing ceremony was close to three hours long and there was plenty of cheering and chanting one last time. Two cheers done several times were the congratulatory “R-O-C-K, you rock, you rock” with clapping (which I think it kind of a cute way to say “good job” from a room with hundreds of people) and even a few “L-O-V-E, love you, love you” chants. There’s a lot of chanting at conferences, as I learned this weekend.

We also traded pins with other schools and I ran out of mine to trade before dinner.

Once the ceremony was over, swap shop started. Swap shop is where schools bring in school swag or spirit wear to trade for other schools’ stuff. We brought a few old shirts and water bottles as well as quite a few new laundry bags, which were a pretty big hit. I ended up trading the most since I ended up with most of the swag from our school. I think a lot of other delegates thought I was a terrible barterer but I really just wanted to get rid of our stuff without ending up with a ton of new items to somehow pack in my bags and put on a plane. I ended up with several cups, t-shirts, sunglasses, Frisbees and who knows what else. It was crazy with everyone crowding around tables and negotiating for things. Our advisor had to really negotiate for a shirt that had an owl and said “Hootie-hoo” for someone she knows that says that phrase. In the end, we were successful and got the shirt in return for a cup and a hat or something odd like that. Swap shop is quite an experience.

Overall, I think SAACURH was a great conference and I made so many memories with my association. I already feel like I have post-conference depression because I don’t have people around me at every waking (and sleeping) second and I’m not rushing to another event. I can’t imagine the amount of work that goes into putting on an event for hundreds of people but UCF people pulled it off. Hopefully they will be able to breathe now. Thanks for a weekend of magic.