Sports editors Anthony Gharib and Adam Jasper discuss women’s soccer bout with UCLA and preview football’s away game against Arizona State. Music by Psystein.

The post Talkin’ Troy S7E7: Women’s soccer vs UCLA preview and USC football vs Arizona State appeared first on Daily Trojan.

In the 300th all-time border battle meeting, the No. 5 Gophers men’s hockey team dominated Wisconsin on the road Saturday night en route to a 4-1 win as they improve to 6-4 this season.

“Good response by us tonight,” Gophers head coach Bob Motzko said. “We had a good look about us, [a] good feel. [We had a] great start, stayed strong, [and we had] a lot of good performances tonight by a lot of players…it was a big win for us.”

After blowing a two-goal lead Friday night, the Gophers got off to an explosive offensive start in the first period, scoring three goals, which set the tone of play for the remainder of the game.

The freshmen gave the Gophers a massive boost in the first period. Matthew Knies scored the opening goal 6:12 seconds into the game after gathering a loose puck at the Badgers’ goal line and burying it after sophomore Mason Nevers tipped junior Ryan Johnson’s shot from the point off the back wall.

Just 1:57 seconds later, Aaron Huglen skated his way into the slot and attempted a back door pass to junior Jaxon Nelson, but it was blocked. Then, he gathered the loose puck and fired a low shot into the net to give the Gophers a 2-0 lead with 11:31 remaining in the first period.

To close out their strong start in the first period, junior Ben Meyers fed a pass to Knies at the goal line, where he spun around, took a shot, and Nelson was there to bury the rebound to score on the power play and give the Gophers a 3-0 lead with 5:04 remaining in the period.

“It was huge,” Motzko said of the Gophers’ fast start. “We came ready to play tonight…it was a great start. We needed it.”

There was a scary moment for the Gophers late in the first period as graduate student goaltender Jack LaFontaine exited the game with an apparent leg injury. However, he later returned at the start of the second period. Junior Justen Close saw his first action in net this season and made three saves while LaFontaine was out.

The Badgers’ lone goal came from Roman Ahcan on the power play 51 seconds into the second period.

Then, the Gophers responded right back 16 seconds later with a goal of their own. Senior Sammy Walker buried a cross-crease pass from his senior counterpart, Blake McLaughlin. After scoring, he flew into the right goalpost and got shaken up, but he would remain in the game.

Walker’s tally gave the Gophers a 4-1 lead and caused Wisconsin to switch their goaltenders as Jared Moe replaced Cameron Rowe.

Less than a minute later, junior Matt Staudacher made a high and massive hit on Wisconsin’s Corson Ceulemans. The referees gave him a five-minute major penalty and a game misconduct for the contact to the head. The league could suspend him.

In the third period, junior Jonny Sorenson got rocked at center ice and visibly was in pain, but like LaFontaine and Walker, he returned to play.

In a physical game from start to finish, the Gophers went on to hold their three-goal lead to close out the game.

“It was a really good response from yesterday,” Knies said. “I’m proud of these fellas. I think we played a hard game all 60 minutes, so [it was a] really good win. It was really unselfish by all our players and just super excited to get that one.”

LaFontaine had a strong game in net for the Gophers, making 34 saves on 35 shots faced to earn a .971 save percentage.

“He’s amazing,” Huglen said. “He had that incident in the first, but he came back and picked up right where he left off. So, we are happy to get the win for him.”

Nine Gophers tallied a point as Knies led with two (one goal, one assist). Huglen’s second goal this season, which came in the first period, ended up as the game-winning goal.
“That was huge for our confidence,” Knies said on the bounce-back win. “Obviously, we don’t want to get swept on the road. To bring this win into the week and prepare for Ohio State, I think it’s going to be huge. So, it was a really big win for our team.”

Next weekend, the Gophers will return home to take on Ohio State on Friday, Nov. 12, at 6:30 p.m., and Saturday, Nov. 13, at 5 p.m., in their third Big Ten series this season.

Senior wide receiver Jake Herslow somehow came down with this ball in the back of the end zone for the first Cougars touchdown of the night against USF. | Courtesy of UH athletics

An offensive explosion of 646 yards powered UH football to its eighth straight win, defeating USF 54-42 on Saturday night at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida.

The first half was the Brian Battie show, as the USF sophomore running back scored every time he touched the ball.

Battie started things off with a bang, taking the opening kickoff 100 yards to the house to give the Bulls a lead just seconds into the game.

A few drives later, UH tied the game as junior quarterback Clayton Tune threw a perfect ball to the back of the end zone that senior receiver Jake Herslow high-pointed and got a foot down in-bounds to secure the catch.

USF answered right back. After a few third down conversions to get deep in UH territory, Battie took his first and only carry of the half up to the middle and strolled 29 yards untouched into the end zone.

UH football cut into the deficit thanks to junior defensive lineman Atlias Bell. Bell tackled USF’s Jaren Mangham in the endzone to force a safety.

Early in the second quarter, senior kicker Dalton Witherspoon connected on a 19-yard field goal to cut USF’s lead to 14-12.

Once again, the Bulls responded as quarterback Timmy McClain found tight end Mitchell Brinkman for a 33-yard score.

The high-scoring first half continued as UH found the end zone two minutes later on a 6-yard rush by freshman running back Alton McCaskill.

Senior cornerback Marcus Jones got the Cougars the ball right back, picking off McClain in the end zone.

Jones’ interception set up a 55-yard touchdown reception by UH sophomore receiver Nathaniel Dell. This gave the Cougars their first lead of the night. This lead lasted only a matter of seconds though, as Battie took the ensuing kickoff 100 yards once again for his second kick return touchdown of the night.

USF went into the locker room up 28-26.

The Cougars wasted no time regaining the lead as McCaskill found the end zone for the second time of the night just over two minutes into the third quarter.

Junior running back Ta’Zhawn Henry got in on the fun on the Cougars’ next drive, taking a handoff 97 yards for a touchdown to put UH up double-digits. This was the longest rush in program history for UH.

USF refused to go away, as the Bulls put together an 11-play, 65-yard scoring drive to cut the Cougars’ lead to five.

As it had done all night, the UH offense responded, marching down the field at ease. Tune completed yet another throw under pressure, connecting with junior receiver Jeremy Singleton for a 27-yard touchdown.

McClain brought the Bulls within five once again, rushing for an 11-yard touchdown with just under four minutes left in the fourth quarter.

McCaskill put an end to any USF comeback hopes just a minute later, rushing for his third touchdown of the night, this time from 16 yards out, to put an exclamation point on the day for the UH offense.

Both McCaskill and Henry eclipsed the 100-yard mark on the ground with McCaskill rushing for 125 yards on 22 carries and Henry tallying 130 yards on 10 carries.

Dell and junior receiver KeSean Carter both had massive games. Dell caught eight passes for 164 yards and Carter hauled in six receptions for 123 yards.

This was the first time in UH football program history the Cougars had multiple 100-yard rushers and receivers in the same game.

sports@thedailycougar.com

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“UH beats USF for eighth straight win” was originally posted on The Cougar

Salvatore Ambrosino

The past week, students going to class on Johnson Avenue have been approached by canvassers around Christoverson and the Buck Stop. More recently, they’ve even been seen going door-to-door at the Lake Hollingsworth Apartments.

While petitioning on public property is protected under state law and the First Amendment,  Florida Southern College is a private entity, leading to the removal of the petitioners from campus by safety officers. 

“We do not allow any polling on the internal parts of our campus,” said Eric Rauch, Director of Campus Safety, who confirmed that there has been an increase of removals from campus regarding canvassers. “We had a couple people coming into The Buck Stop—that’s a place for our students to have dinner, sit down and talk to each other, and not to be bothered by people coming from off campus.”  

Petitioners have been spotted on the sidewalk around Lake Hollingsworth Drive; some of the strategies of the canvassers have made students uncomfortable.

Ruby Silver, a communications and psychology sophomore, says she was approached by a male canvasser at the Target on 98. She signed the petition. 

“The next day there’s a knock on our door at LHA,” Silver said. “It’s the same man from Target. You can imagine I was scared because this random man who has my personal information just showed up at my school owned apartment.” 

Silver says it seemed to be a coincidence because the petitioner appeared to be going door-to-door. 

“Honestly it’s kind of uncomfortable to be approached with a petition where you live,” Silver said. 

Although the petitioners’ affiliation on campus are yet unclear, Florida Voters in Charge, a non-partisan political action committee primarily funded by the Seminole Tribe of Florida, has planted general canvassers in popular areas such as the Lakeland Public Library. 

The initiative sponsored by the PAC called “Amendment X, section 33” was described by one of the petitioners as a tax. Canvassers at the library promote the legislation by telling subscribers that they are helping to fund hospitals and schools. 

The language in the initiative only describes a “minimum capital investment requirement,” with no mention of hospitals or education, only improvements to the “license holder’s gaming complex.” 

But different initiatives reported by The Alligator are being canvassed in Gainesville and Orlando supporting the Seminole Compact, protecting profits of The Tribe, apparently in opposition to the petitioners in Lakeland.

With enough signatures sent to the state, these initiatives could be included on a list of legislation eligible to be passed during Florida’s 2022 gubernatorial election, according to Daisean Wilson, the supervisor of the petitions for Voters in Charge in Polk County. In Florida, a petition needs nearly 900,000 signatures to be considered for the ballot. 

In August, Governor Ron DeSantis passed the Seminole Compact, the largest gaming compact in history, which is projected to yield a minimum of $2.5 billion in revenue for the state over the next five years—$6 billion through the year 2030. The compact also means the rollout of new casino games, translating to “more jobs for Floridians and more money invested in the state,” according to DeSantis. 

Currently, the Seminole Tribe of Florida pays none of their revenue from casinos to the state.

The post Canvassers gathering signatures are removed from campus appeared first on The Southern Newspaper.

COVID-19 and lost confidence: A shell of Cal loses 10-3 to Arizona

Al Sermeno of KLC Fotos/Courtesy

20 games without a victory. 0-8 overall. 0-5 in Pac-12 play. Yet, Arizona did the unthinkable on Saturday, as its first win this season came against Cal with a final scoreline of 10-3.

All the way from gloomy Berkeley, the 3-5 Bears journeyed to sunny Tucson to face Arizona on its home turf. With nothing remotely wild about the Wildcats, the game was expected to be a fairly easy win for the blue and gold –– that is, until 24 Cal players tested positive for COVID-19.

“We found out on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. We were almost not filling the starting eleven. A lot of guys played their first action,” said head coach Justin Wilcox.

Gracing the field with a depleted roster, the Bears were operating under a heavy loss, mainly due to the absence that was felt on the field without starting quarterback Chase Garbers. With senior Ryan Glover replacing Garbers, the offense was in all forms of disarray as young recruits received playing time that wouldn’t have otherwise happened. Miscommunication and ineffective play calling was sprinkled all over the first two quarters on both sides.

“The (offense) did the best that they absolutely could. Ryan did the best he could. He was a bit off on throws, he did the best he could,” Wilcox said.

Cal’s pickings for starters were slim, but at least some surefire fixtures were available to play. One was senior linebacker Marqez Bimage, who recorded three tackles in the first half alone. Another was punter Jamieson Sheahan, who took the longest punt of his career at 57 yards.

Cal kicker Dario Longhetto was also absent from the field. Not that he was needed, anyhow, as the Bears failed to approach field goal range more times than not. At halftime, both teams were at a 0-0 standstill.

A scoring drought by the Bears through two quarters was unexpected, especially given Arizona’s lackluster 0-5 conference record. While Cal did force two turnovers and displayed some faith-restoring pass breakups, the fact that it couldn’t manage any touchdowns to a winless opponent was uninspiring.

After Arizona quarterback Will Plummer suffered an injury and left the field with a bloody hand, Jamarye Joiner entered the game. One of five quarterbacks that Arizona is known to routinely rotate, Joiner was rumored to be out during this match due to a right knee sprain. Yet, braving that injury, he replaced Plummer during the third quarter.

The Wildcats managed a lead as the game neared the end of the third quarter. Via a 29 yard field goal, the unthinkable happened –– Arizona was up 3-0 against the Bears.

Those three points served as a wakeup call for Cal, which attempted and succeeded in tying the game 3-3 shortly thereafter. Redshirt sophomore Nick Lopez –– Dario Longhetto’s replacement –– sank a 34 yard field goal.

Tied at 3-3, the Bears were full of hope that proved to be absolutely fruitless. With around two minutes left in the fourth quarter, the kittens finally lived up to their “Wildcats” moniker as they scored a touchdown and extra point, giving them a 10-3 lead.

In the winding minutes, a plethora of passing misfires by Glover led to Cal’s demise. After the visiting team failed to answer back, Arizona fans stormed the field –– it was the Wildcats’ first win since their match against UCLA in the fall of 2019, almost 800 days ago.

A game that was supposed to be an easy win for the Bears, Arizona had hit rock bottom before meeting the blue and gold. They have now proven that there is nowhere to go but up.

The Pac-12 shows that underdogs can still find success, even after two years without a single win. The Bears displayed this by winning against Colorado and Oregon State after a losing streak of its own. Now, they have helped the Wildcats prove this as well.

While countless starters were out under COVID-19 protocol, poor performance was no excuse as Arizona managed to embarrass the Bears and steal a win right out from under the blue and gold.

Maria Khan covers football. Contact her at mariakhan@dailycal.org.

The Daily Californian

Tanner Morgan began the game with an 11-yard connection to Daniel Jackson but soon had his pass tipped at the line of scrimmage and intercepted by Tarique Barnes at midfield.

Illinois capitalized off of that turnover with an Isaiah Williams two-yard touchdown run. 7-0 Illini.

Led by Chase Brown, Illinois closed the first quarter by dominating the ground game. The Gophers defense has only allowed on average 92.9 opponent rushing yards per game, Illinois ran for 93 in the first quarter.

On the first play of the second quarter, Brandon Peters found Tip Reiman in the corner of the endzone for a 15-yard touchdown. Illinois took a surprising 14-0 lead.

Boye Mafe talked postgame about the difficult first quarter on defense.

“You can’t always enact from scout and watching film exactly how it’s going to be in the game,” said Mafe. “In the first couple drives we got to see exactly what it was like and learned what small adjustments we had to make.”

Minnesota on their next possession turned the ball over on downs with a failed 4th and one. Cole Kramer kept the ball for no gain. Kramer on the drive had two rushes for 13 yards and completed a 20-yard pass down the sideline to Ko Kieft.

The rest of the second quarter was a defensive slugfest as neither team scored. Illinois repeatedly went three-and-out every drive. The Gophers attempted a 45-yard field goal before halftime but it hooked wide left.

Thomas Rush made a key sack on the Illini’s first drive of the second half to force a punt. Illinois was driving near midfield and clicking on offense, unlike at the end of the first half.

Chris Autman-Bell on the next possession got injured after going up for a pass in traffic between two defenders that took him out of the game. It appeared that his head hit hard on the turf but he walked off under his own power.

To end the drive, Morgan was sacked by Owen Carney Jr. on 4th down for a loss of seven.

The Illini offense started to cook again on the next drive with Peters completing a 23-yard pass to Casey Washington, followed by a 12-yard run by Chase that would take the game to the end of the third quarter.

That Illinois burst proved to be all for naught as the Illini punted the ball back to the Gophers as the two teams traded three-and-outs.

“It was a combination of protection and drops,” Fleck said on the Gophers’ passing struggles. Fleck also said Illinois was implementing good blitz packages where they were inserting gaps and coming in from different depths and directions.

On the next drive, Morgan and the Gophers offense finally found their groove. Morgan went 7-9, throwing for 76 yards.

Morgan capped off his impressive drive with a fake hand-off and rushed to the left for a touchdown. After a Matthew Trickett extra-point miss, it was 14-6 Illinois with five minutes remaining.

Time oozed out for the Gophers on the next Illinois drive as they punted the ball down inside Minnesota’s 2-yard line with 72 seconds left.

Minnesota started the drive strong with Dylan Wright hauling in a 36-yard catch. Everything went downhill after that huge play.

Isaiah Gay sacked Morgan for a loss of 11 yards. Following that loss, Kerby Joseph intercepted Morgan’s pass intended for Brevyn Spann-Ford to seal the game.

“When you face adversity there’s two roads you can go down, said Mariano Sori-Marin. “You can go down the blame game or you can come together. I know how resilient we are, and I know when we come in tomorrow, we’re going to get down to work.

Minnesota plays No. 22 Iowa next Saturday in Iowa City.

If the Gophers win out they still have a chance to play in the 2021 Big Ten Championship in Indianapolis. “When you get to November, the goal every year is to be in the hunt,” said Fleck. “We’re still in the hunt.”

The second day of Astroworld Festival has been canceled after eight people were killed and hundreds injured at the event on Friday. | Jhair Romero/The Cougar

At least eight deaths and over 300 injuries were confirmed at rapper Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival at NRG Park on Friday.

Seventeen people were hospitalized, with at least 11 of them being in cardiac arrest. One of the youngest victims is around 10-years-old, according to Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo.

The second day of Astroworld Festival has been canceled as a result.

“We are focused on supporting local officials however we can,” a statement read on the festival’s social media pages. “With that in mind the festival will no longer be held on Saturday.”

The University released a statement on social media Saturday morning, including a link for campus Counseling and Psychological Services for UH students impacted by the event.

“The tragic deaths and injuries that occurred during the Astroworld Festival are heartbreaking,” UH said in a Twitter post. “Our thoughts are with all who have been effected by this incredible loss, including the families and friends of the victims.”

news@thedailycougar.com

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“Astroworld: 8 dead, over 300 injured after crowd surge” was originally posted on The Cougar

What your green juice won’t tell you: Seeking purity in an interconnected world

Joey Parsons/Creative Commons

Photo by Joey ParsonsCC BY-SA 2.0

I go to my local grocery store. Fall is here, and with that comes the purchase of a seasonal air freshener. While I am faced with a multitude of options, my eyes naturally scan over to the organic, nontoxic brands. They cost extra, but they’re worth it; the extra $3 will serve as an imaginary, reassuring gap between myself and the menacing “toxic” chemicals that I would otherwise subject myself to. This idea leads me to think of something I read in “Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times,” a novel by Alexis Shotwell: “We are inescapably entwined and entangled with others, even when we cannot track or directly perceive this entanglement.” Shotwell writes this to explain our intermixing with the chemicals in the air, the toxins in the foods we consume and the people on every corner of the earth.

Because the truth is, we live our lives cushioned in the safety of these fallacious gaps between ourselves and the things that scare us about the modern world — the looming presence of the toxins and chemicals we’ve introduced to it. Yet, this idea of being able to delineate and sectionalize any discomfort the world provides us is rooted in purity culture in its simplest form, deriving from the incorrect yet age-old idea that the world is as simple as black and white; good and bad; toxic and harmless; healthy and unhealthy.

The skin care brand Philosophy, for example, capitalizes off of this idea. Much of the brand is formed off of their slogan, “philosophy: when life is complicated, purity is simple.” This and their top soap line, “purity made simple,” perpetuates the idea that there is a blank slate within ourselves we can revert back to. After all, 87% of users said their skin “immediately looked and felt like a clean canvas” after using, according to Philosophy’s website. This idea that we were born pure and need to restore our natural state is ingrained within us from the moment we are born. We’re blamed for our inevitable integration with the toxicity of the world and targeted by brands such as Philosophy that sell us the promise of regaining our “natural, pure” state.

Yet, there’s no form of consumption we can engage in or lifestyle we can adopt that does anything other than further solidify us with our hundreds of years of human impurity; we’re a world built on synthetic chemicals. That green juice, as much as we may wish it would, won’t erase the tens of hundreds of years of mass atmospheric chemical distribution, and spending the extra $3 on the nontoxic aerosol sprays won’t undo the chemical and immoral residue that has been left behind for us to grow from. Regardless, personal responsibility for these complex issues is pushed, yet these have existed long before we were able to make the choice of paper or plastic, toxic or nontoxic.

Going back to a “clean canvas” is simply impossible. Conservative estimates predict that humans are exposed to about 700,000 toxic chemicals on a daily basis. DDT was sprayed from the backs of cars in the 1940s and its harm will persist for at least three generations. Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide emitted from the production of meat products continue to seep in and out of our lungs.

We continue to chase this idea that separation from things that cause us discomfort and are deemed “impure” is possible. But the truth is that our cells, bodies and communities are not pure or separate. We are objectively shaped and touched by elements of the world that we don’t like. Human genomes exist in only about 10% of the cells in our body, while the other 90% of cells are inhabited with genomes of bacteria, fungi, protists and whatnot: We are outnumbered by these nonhuman elements. We exist in a perpetual state of togetherness, and not in just a cheesy, brightly-colored, Instagram-infographic type of way, but rather in a much larger, chemical sense. The spaces between our human and nonhuman counterparts are not as explicitly bordered as we believe them to be, because it isn’t simple as good and bad; toxic and harmless; us and them.

So what is the answer? In regard to nonhuman toxicity, are we expected to continue to try and run from this or give up completely? Our attempts to delineate and make sense of this inevitable truth are commendable — human, even — yet unequivocally irrelevant. This isn’t to say that we should be pro-chemical, pro-pollution, pro-toxicity; ideally, we should be just the opposite. Shotwell’s point is that our attempts at “purity” in a relevant sense can often get misconstrued with personal responsibility. We are not all equally responsible for the toxins that lie dormant in our bodies, but we are equally called to respond. We chase this idealized “blank slate” facade, yet have never existed as anything other than pre-polluted.

Perhaps this longing for purity is nothing more than a deep-rooted trauma response that caters to our perpetual need for ease and serves as a blanket response to moral and social depredation of all forms. Shotwell believes this to be the case. We’ve marketed the idea of “purity,” yet this does nothing more than promote a sort of defensive individualism that leads us to believe that the separation of ourselves and nature is as explicitly bordered as eating organic and using nontoxic plug in sprays. This is what truly characterizes us as human: our unending longing to separate ourselves from elements of the world that make us uncomfortable, and the false illusion that we’re able to do so.

In regard to deconstructing this method of thought, we must start by transforming our mindset from avoidance to acceptance of this interconnectedness. The active acknowledgement of the fact that we’re all made up of and surrounded by the same elements will allow us to internalize that what we do matters in regard to the greater whole. There are elements of the world and ourselves that we repudiate, yet we can’t change what others have done before us, just as we can’t rearrange our internal makeup to distinctly separate ourselves from what we fear the most. This co-constitution is an unchanging situation, regardless of how many $14 air fresheners we buy. These arbitrary borders between good and bad, toxic and clean, us and them, are immensely blurred and unequivocally socially constructed. Individualism is valiant, (and true in an intellectual sense), yet a fantasy when looking at our bodies and the ways in which we have relied on others from the moment we’re born. The strangers you pass on the train, the pollutants we tell ourselves we bypass through the selection of nontoxic, the bits and pieces of yourself that gust through the crevices between you and them and this and that — we all exist as beings made up of the same elements. The idea of interconnectedness is a lot more comforting to me, anyway.

Contact Taylor Carolan at tcarolan@dailycal.org

The Daily Californian

Content warning: This podcast contains references to sexual assault, drugging and violence.

Podcast editor Abbey Martichenko and podcast staff member Claire Fogarty recap last week’s biggest stories. In this episode, they discuss the delayed communication on behalf of the University regarding the drugging and sexual assault cases at Sigma Nu and a student’s petition against unethical wellness checks. 

Listen through to also get the rundown on some notable A&E, sports and opinion pieces. Be sure to check back next week! Music by Tim Taj via Pixabay.

If you are in need of support, here are some resources you can contact:

USC Relationship and Sexual Violence Prevention and Services: Located at Engemann Student Health Center Suite 356. Individuals can call (213)-740-9355 and request to speak with an advocate or counselor. Services are confidential. 

Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN): A free, confidential hotline that is active 24/7. Individuals can call (800)-656-4673.

The post Week 11 recap: Petition calls for accountability from DPS, LAPD following “unethical” wellness check appeared first on Daily Trojan.

Juana Garcia/The Cougar

A festive way to celebrate friendship this fall is by throwing a Friendsgiving. With help from all your friends, setting up one can be fairly simple and inexpensive.

Food

Everyone should agree on what food will be served. Take into consideration if anyone has allergies or preferences to certain ingredients, that way each person can enjoy a meal that night.

For Friendsgiving, it’s easier to bring appetizers or bite-sized dishes to the table so everyone can grab a little bit of everything and still socialize. 

Stuffing bites, sweet potato fritters and stuffing muffins are just a few examples of an array of food ideas.

Decorations

Instead of purchasing pricey decor, search for items like silverware and table toppers at a dollar store or the clearance sections of your favorite shops. 

Focus on getting the essentials first such as dinnerware, chairs and a large enough table for every friend to sit at.

To make the place feel festive but easy to clean up, incorporate fake gourds, fall leaves, string lights and autumn-colored balloons or streamers throughout the area to set the mood. Pinterest almost always has easy decor inspiration for fall gatherings. 

Entertainment

Activities that involve teamwork or can be played with more than five people are suitable for Friendsgiving. 

Jenga, a scavenger hunt, painting pumpkins and games like charades allows for everyone to participate or pick and choose which activity they’re feeling up to do. 

Making the event go as planned

Create a group chat with all the friends that plan on attending so organizing and making sure everyone is on the same page is easier. This is where you all can discuss who is bringing what and the budget.

Share each other’s calendars to see what days and times everyone is available. Remember that it’s Friendsgiving, so the responsibility should be divided, that way pressure isn’t solely on one person.

The holidays are a special time to spend with your loved ones so make the most of it by having gatherings while having fun in the process. 

news@thedailycougar.com

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“Friendsgiving planning for students made easy” was originally posted on The Cougar