GUELPH POLITICAST #71 - College Royal

Before there was a University of Guelph, there was College Royal, an annual open house that invites the city to campus to get a sampling of all the great learning, research and education that happens between College St and Stone Rd. It's the biggest university open house of its kind in North America, so would it surprise you to learn that it's undergrad students that put it all together every year?

The animal shows! Science magic! Campus tours! Pancake breakfasts! Tractor rodeos! Bubble Soccer! Wait, bubble soccer? Yes, that's apparently a thing, and you will be able to see it at this year's College Royal, the 92nd open house that exposes the University of Guelph and all it has to offer to the greater Guelph community. It attracts 20,000 people to campus over two days, representing the hard work of hundreds of volunteers, who contribute thousands of hours of assistance. On this Guelph Politicast, we talk to two of them.

The guests this week are Vanessa Crowley and Hannah Sweett (in the picture above Vanessa is in the centre in the brown jacket and Hannah is directly behind her on your left in the red scarf). Vanessa is the President of College Royal this year, and Hannah is the VP of Public Relations, and if you can't tell from the youth looking back at you from the picture they're both undergrad students. If the weight of being promising young scientists isn't enough, they've also taken a leadership role in organizing what is arguably the biggest event on the university calendar. No pressure, right?

We talk about some of those pressures on the podcast, but we also talk about the logistics of a long running an event like College Royal. What things do people expect year after year? How do they leave their mark on an event that's run this long? And what kind of things are they taking away from the experience? Before heading out to College Royal next weekend, give yourself the experience of going behind the scenes with this week's Guelph Politicast. 

College Royal happens next week on March 18 and 19. For all the details, go to their website, or you can download the College Royal app at the App store or Google Play. 

The theme music for the Guelph Politicast is from the KPM Klassics collection by Syd Dale.

The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here.

Remember that the Politicast Podbean channel is also the host for podcast versions of Open Sources Guelph. The previous Thursday's episode of Open Sources will be posted on Mondays.