Round-Up, 1st blog

My first blog of the semester I will discuss a huge event that occurs every year at the University of South Florida, the Round-Up. The Round-Up is a large pep rally I would say, that showcases student organizations, has special guests such as the university President and a comedy show that follows. It always occurs on the Thursday of the first week of classes and brings out large numbers of students. This year there were more than 4,000 people that showed up to enjoy in the festivities

I am proud to say that Round-Up highly successful this year. My role in the event was the student coordinator, which deemed me the task of inviting all the guests, writing the scripts and making sure everything ran smoothly the day of. I was working under the Office of Student Organizations who is run by the Associate Dean for Student affairs, Regina Young Hyatt. The event started off with a video that I wrote, produced, shot and edited. The video consisted of two students running around campus telling different people it was Round-Up Day and should stop what they were doing to go to Round-Up. It was stressful putting it together, but I was proud of the outcome. The next few segments were of student leaders, administrators and athletics personnel. The student leaders were Greg Morgan, Student Body President and, Thomas King, Student Body Vice President. Their segment consisted of telling students about their Student Government initiatives, a skit about stopping students who wear other universities’ colors at USF and a skit with the USF starting quarterback Matt Grothe.

During the administrator scenes, Dr. Meningall, the Vice President of Student Affairs, and Dr. Wilcox, the Provost and Assistant Vice President for USF, discussed their collegiate experience. This was important to tie what they went through in college with today’s students in an attempt to build a commonality with today’s student body. They mentioned everything from the music they listened to, to Greek life and different challenges they had with academics. In addition, the President of the university, Judy Genshaft had her own segment on stage. She walked on accompanied by USF cheerleaders and the Herd of Thunder band to get the crowed pumped and excited for the year.

With all the great entertainment, the night wasn’t complete until the main act came on. Two cast members from the hit Comedy Central Show, Reno 911, were the standup talent that performed. There names were Cedric Yarbough and Carlos Alazraqui. Carlos who has been a standup comic for many years started off the show and was pretty good. He mentioned how he also does voice-overs, the most notable being the Taco Bell dog on the commercials and Rocko from Rocko’s Modern Life. Next, Cedric entered the stage and did about a twenty minute standup with Carlos. Carlos then left Cedric on the stage who just started doing standup comedy not too long ago. He wasn’t bad, but resorted much of his time to Karaoke and other tactics to keep the crowd entertained other than just with comedy. To end their performance they both came back on stage with their Reno 911 uniforms and created improv skits right in front of the crowd.