Throughout the past few weeks, various student organizations, fraternities, and sororities have been working nonstop with dwindling budgets and hours of sleep to complete their booths. Countless hours have been spent painting, building, nailing, cutting, and constructing. The commitment from each and every member shows truly how much heart everyone has put in to create such grand booths for the public to enjoy.

All the effort pays off today, as Spring Carnival has begun! After the Opening Ceremony, hundreds of people made their way towards Midway, where they were greeted by a plethora of colors, themes and prizes in the form of booths.

Each booth falls under either the competitive or non-competitive category. The competitive organizations will be judged based on their internal and structural appearance, originality of structure, craftsmanship, etc. None of the organizations hesitated from putting in their best efforts, and they had even been planning their booths since 5 months ago.

"We thought of the theme last semester," said a member of Alpha Epsilon Pi, and added, "Almost 40 people helped in putting up our booth." AEPi's booth, aptly named "AEPinball," had a giant home-made pinball machine. The structures within the machine were in fact CMU buildings along with the Cathedral of Learning as well as the "Men Walknig to the Sky" sculpture. You could hit Hamerschlag hall for maximum points, or try and get the ball inside CFA. The booth was fun for kids and adults alike.

Kappa Alpha Theta also had an interactive booth in the form of a giant beehive. The booth was very well made, with careful attention paid to detail. Fun facts about bees and beehives could be found all along the inside of the booth. They even had their own version of skeeball, i.e. "beeball." If you didn't wanna play that, you could build you own beanie bee by fitting together its head, thorax and abdomen. But I think the main attraction of the booth still remained the headbands that Kappa Alpha Theta gave out with antennas similar to that of a bee. Students could be found wearing those all around Midway.

Alpha Phi Omega's concessions stand, serving many specialties such as funnel cakes and fried oreos, was a big success. Delta Delta Delta's booth called "Underground Adventure" seemed to be dedicated to ladybugs. The effort involved in making the booth was evident by the fact that most of the things in the booth were made using paper mache. This was complemented by Delta Gamma who erected a rainforest booth. The Mudge House booth also involved finding plastic bugs hidden beneath hundreds of balls. Mudge House residents claimed that this resembled the mess in their dorm rooms.

The booth by Fringe, "Mousetrap, the Game" involved many fun games, such as the hoopla, mini golf, etc. Zeta Beta Tau also offered a lot of fun with "Eyeball." The unique Cricket booth by Mayur offered a lot of people a chance to play a sport they had never played before. Kappa Kappa Gamma's "Gumball Machine" was quite a success. Sigma Phi Epsilon's booth reminded everyone of old school video games such as Mario and Donkey Kong, while ASA's booth displayed gigantic versions of board games such as the game of Life, RISK, and ASA's very own candy Monopoly (Collect 200 lollipops as you pass go). Sigma Alpha Epsilon also showed an old game favorite: "Battleship."

Speaking of games, the International Students Union (ISU) constructed an enormous Nintendo controller which they displayed on the outside of their booth. They called their booth, "The Ocarina of Time" and had placed many items in the booth from the hit video game Zelda.

TSA's toy chest had a fascinating collection of toys, while Phi Kappa Theta's cuckoo clock was a very unique display. SDC sponsored many booths, such as "Legos," "Burrito," and "Honey I Shrunk the Students." Sigma Nu, like every other year, recycled their booth from last Carnival and gave away live goldfish. Sigma Tau Gamma's booth, "The Brain," was a maze of brain teasers, mind bafflers, optical illusions and fun facts about the brain.

Some of the other booths included the Astronomy Club's "The Universe", Circle K's "Cheez'M", Beta Theta Pi's "A day at the beach," BioSAC's "Virus," SWE's "Jewelry Box," and Allies' "Open House". All these made for some awesome displays. The Pioneers were not left far behind, with their very own "Fridge" booth. The ArchiBooth made of over two thousand empty glass bottles, left Tepper freshman Stefan Gutstadt saying, "I wish my house would look like this."

On the whole, the entire display was awesome. Each booth was individual and unique in its own right, even though all of them centred around the theme for Carnival 2007 "Small Things Made LARGE." All of the competitive organizations await the results with baited breath to see whether their effort will be awarded. The award ceremony takes place at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday. Spring Carnival Committee also awards one "Chairman's Choice" to the blitz booth with the over-all best guest experience. I'm sure each of the non-competitive organizations will also be looking forward to finding out who wins the award. But no matter who wins, all the organizations will be pleased by the amazing display they have put up.

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