Students dig in to the Strawberry Festival

“All American and all strawberry” was junior Peter Larrs’ description of the activities outside of the Student Life Pavilion last Thursday. Starting the previous Monday, balloons, posters and everything strawberry decorated the SLP and other USD buildings promoting the Strawberry Festival.
Planning for the festival took about a month and a half, according to Faculty and Staff Dining Manager David Kaplan. “The point is to celebrate spring and to get people excited about food, eating and seasonal fruit,” Kaplan said.
In order to do this, visitors of the festival got free strawberry ice cream, strawberry shortcake, strawberry jam, crates of strawberries, strawberry tea, chocolate covered strawberries, strawberry flavored water, strawberry parfaits and strawberry glazed baby back ribs.
Students were drawn to the festival by the songs of DJ Beck, who played music like “Strawberry fields forever,” and announced, “You can have whatever you like, and you know you like strawberries!”
Not only were there a mass amount of strawberries, but there were games and characters to get people excited about the fruit, which was advertised as the only fruit with seeds on the outside. Molly the Strawberry Princess walked around handing out strawberry candies, strawberry- shaped stress balls and most importantly, delivering the pies for the pie-eating contest. Junior Molly Duff, dressed in red and black and topped off with a tiara, was approached while eating at the SLP and asked to be the Strawberry Princess. Duff describes the job as, “like working at Disneyland.”
The Strawberry Festival was complete with a walking Strawberry Shortcake, who proclaimed, “My favorite fruit, and full vitamin C.” While it seems fitting to have a giant sized doll delivering strawberry cheer, some students didn’t feel so enthusiastic about it. “The little strawberry girl scared me,” freshman Kacie Forker said. “I don’t ever get strawberries in New York, so the fair is awesome, but I do not like the giant doll.”
In order to promote the fair, Dining Services went through 150 flats of strawberries in the days before the festival, and then a complete 75 flats in the two hours that the festival was happening. With each flat weighing eight pounds, that’s 1,800 pounds of strawberries in four days. For many people, 1,800 pounds of strawberries is the perfect recipe for community.
“I went to San Diego State and they never had anything to get the whole school involved,” Erik Kim-Holmgren, who works in the law school registrar office, said. “USD really has a community feel. Everyone is walking around with huge smiles on their faces. What a great thing to do before finals.”
“The food is great,” senior Amanda Booker said. “I love when the University sponsors things like this. It brings people together, which is what the SLP is supposed to do for our student body.”
As the Strawberry Festival ended, only one thing was on the mind of senior Erin Prickett, “When is the meat festival?”