Here’s a bingo joke: What does a bingo player have in common with a driver in a parking lot?
They’re both wishing for a free space!
This rang true on Thursday, March 14, when the Office of Student Activities (OSA) hosted their famous Bingo Night. OSA Bingo is a beloved event among the students at Elizabethtown College. Many students show up for this event for various reasons, but most come for the prizes provided by OSA.
The Koons Activity Venue (KAV) was packed with enough tables and chairs for 300 people, and more than 200 students were in attendance. Where you would be seated for bingo would depend on your placement in line. I was near the front, so I sat at the first table. I was seated across from third-year Lorelei Eck, who told me that she had arrived at bingo around 4:30 p.m.
“I’ve been going to Bingo ever since my freshman year,” Eck said. “I’d like to win at least once before I graduate.”
Eck claimed that while waiting in line, she painted her nails and got homework done. The line began forming really around 5:30 p.m. even though the doors for Bingo opened at 6:30 p.m. The line went far back into the Blue Bean, and many students had set up areas for where they would sit and wait. Another Bingo participant, Raia Meckley, says that she sat in Blue Bean and did homework while waiting for the doors to open.
Students come in pairs or larger groups to play. The prizes are one of the big reasons that OSA Bingo is so popular. This year, the prizes ranged from Legos and gift cards to a Nintendo Switch. The Nintendo Switch was the most coveted prize, as many of the Bingo participants wanted to win. Eck wanted to win the Nintendo Switch so she could play “Animal Crossing: New Horizons”. Meckley wanted to win the switch to have a tournament.
“My roommate and I had planned to set up a projector and do a tournament in our room,” Meckley said while smiling. “I really was looking forward to that.”
The first round of Bingo began a little bit after 7:00 p.m., and there were about 10 rounds of Bingo. Each round consisted of a different style of winning Bingo, and each round was played for one of the prizes. A majority of the rounds were played “regular bingo” style; you can win by getting five numbers in a row. Some of the rounds were played in other ways, like winning by making the letter “T” or “X”, getting the four corners or making a “postage stamp” in the top right corner. The most difficult round was the last round, which was a blackout. In order to get a Bingo and win, one must have every single number in their bingo square filled. This is the round that everyone played to try and win the Nintendo Switch. I asked both Eck and Meckley if they had any bingo strategies that they were going to use to attempt to win the Nintendo Switch. Eck claimed that she has no strategy; she just hopes that she will win. Meckley on the other hand, said she didn’t use cards for the items that didn’t intrigue her., This is a strategy I myself used, as it allowed me to have more cards for prizes I particularly wanted. Sometimes, there would be multiple Bingo winners. In this case, the two winners would play “rock, paper,scissors” until there was a winner, and they would get to keep the prize. The other person would get Jay Bucks as their prize.
For many students like Eck, they take winning bingo very seriously. Eck was very determined to win, and when I asked her what she will do after bingo, she said, “I’ll probably go back to my dorm and seethe with rage because I didn’t win.” Meckley had some better luck — her roommate, Allison Hrvirnak, won the two Lego sets.
OSA Bingo is a fun experience that brings out lots of students. I would highly recommend anyone to come to the next event. Although I was upset because I was one space away from winning the Nintendo Switch, I had a lot of fun and I made some new friends. I feel as though Meckley puts the experience of Bingo nicely, as she said, “I just like the environment, and it gets me out of my room to socialize with people I’ve never met before!”
