Student Council Pulls the Plug on Hamber Festival
Despite Eric Hamber’s Student Council’s intention to run a festival at the end of this school year, the event has been scrapped, says Co-President Wilson Liang (12).
The planning for the event star ted in September, says Liang. “We started immediately in the hopes that we could do Carfreenival.”
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Hamber used to host “Carfreenival” every two years in June, an event planned by Student Council that would see Willow Street closed off between 33rd and 37th avenues.
“It was like a great way for all the students to come together,” says Liang. Liang was in grade 8 when Carfreenival was last hosted.
Clubs would set up booths at the festival, providing food and activities for staff and students. One especially popular booth was the cotton candy booth, where lines stayed consistently long throughout the event. Food trucks providing snacks such as ice cream and fish and chips were also present.
Carfreenival was last run in the 2018/19 school year, before going on hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last year, Student Council was planning to run Carfreenival for the first time post-pandemic, but was not able to due to time restrictions and complications regarding the construction of Hamber’s seismically safe buildings. “It was a matter of timeline. We didn’t start early enough.” Liang stated.
One of the primary concerns for planning the festival this year was the construction of the new school. With the construction vehicles, closing off Willow street was not an option.
Additionally, Liang said that the school’s administration told StuCo that they would not be able to call it Carfreenival, so they rebranded the event as “Hamber Festival”.
Student Council executives sat down with Hamber’s Principal, Ms. M. Jensen around spring break, where Ms. Jensen said she was concerned about the number of moving parts that come with planning a festival.
Student Council sponsors told the StuCo executives that it would be best to postpone it for this year, and instead wait for a future year to do it.
Co-president Liang was concerned with postponing it, saying that he “[Wasn’t] sure if it’s actually gonna happen anymore [...] I have no idea if it’s postponed or if this event is ever gonna take place again.”