Castleton’s Campus Activities Board is seeing a record-breaking upturn in attendance and participation at events since the start of the new year.

In the past month, CAB leaders say they have seen a huge spike in attendance compared to previous semesters, not only in their special events, but in the regular events as well.

Comedian and “America’s Got Talent” quarter-finalist Julia Scotti hit it out of the park on Oct. 18. Performing at her first college venue, Scotti broke CAB’s record for attendance at a single-performer event with a crowd of around 75 people, according to CAB officials.   

“That was definitely one of our major successes,” said James Wolfe, vice president of Campus Activities. “It was really awesome to go out and support that.”

“We’ve also had great success with Karaoke night,” he said. “I believe that was our highest-attended event of the year so far and we’ve only had one of them.”

The event, covered in the previous issue of Castleton Spartan, had over 100 visitors during the two hours, and many stayed and participated. Karaoke is one of four regularly held “homegrown” events that happens Thursday nights in Fireside Cafe.

Students are also impressed by the amount of work CAB’s members are able to get done while also handling their academics.

“I think CAB is even more impressive though, just because it’s like only student run and organized … and they do so good with what little they were given. They’re doing so much better this semester,” said student Lyss Eaton.

Wolfe suspects there’s a variety of reasons why events have been so popular this year.

“One in particular is that there’s obviously not a lot to do around here,” he said. “Places that were busy three years ago are now shut down, like Fishtail, and there’s some other places. So that’s bringing in and just keeping people on campus and they’re like, ‘Well what do I do now?’ Well come to an event and have fun and then if you desire to go have fun somewhere else you can go do that.”

He then suggested another possibility.

“But it could just be that the freshmen class is really interested in new kinds of things and they’re taking advantage,” he said.

Overall, CU students are finding a lot of reasons to appreciate CAB’s work on campus.

“I think that CAB is a really great program that we have here because it’s a way for us to have events that don’t include alcohol,” said Audrey Phillip. “As someone who doesn’t drink, I really enjoy that because I don’t like to be in situations with a lot of people who’re belligerently drunk.”

Other students feel similarly, and agree that the events help offer something more interesting to do around the Castleton area.

“It’s convenient to have something to do that’s on campus that isn’t partying or whatever,” said Amanda Harris. “It just gives me something fun and easy to do that I can do with my friends or sometimes by myself that gets me out of my room and not studying all the time.”

CAB’s members have been receiving a lot of positive feedback on their recent events, as well as suggestions for the future. Wolfe said they’re looking into bringing back new and old favorites in the spring, such as archery tag and maybe another paint party.