Zoom banquet finishes off the year for peer leaders
by Jonathan Grenier
(Photo: Ariel Dumont)
The FPU peer leaders attended an online end of the year banquet.
The banquet occurred at 7:00 p.m. on April 29th through a zoom call with all 2019/2020 peer leaders (PLs) that could attend. The point of the banquet was to look back and reflect on the school year as student leaders.
The PLs were joined by university administration members Derek Scalia, Jim O’loughlin, Scott Ansevin-Allen, and Andrew Pollom to discuss the past year.
Each PL had one minute to talk about their assigned co-PL from the past school year. Everyone involved had kind words to say. Sophomore Adam Carmen talked about the banquet after. He said, “I would have loved to see everyone face to face again but It was a nice way to see everyone again and have one last meeting with all of the PLs.”
Usually, the end of the year banquet would have occurred during this time in Spagnuolo Hall with an award ceremony and dinner. But this online replacement was a success. Senior PL trainer Ariel Dumont helped to plan the event. “It was so sad to not have the banquet this year but it was super nice to have a zoom with all the peer leaders,” she said. “We planned it about a week in advance and hoped we would get a good turn out and we did! It was so nice to see all of the familiar faces!”
PL trainers like Ariel Dumont run the program alongside the advisors Derek Scalia and Jim O’loughlin. “It was so incredible to work with this group of leaders to create an amazing experience for the incoming freshmen,” Dumont said. “I will never forget this amazing experience and I am so thankful for the other PLT’s that helped me grow into this role.”
The PL program always tries to support the Raven community, especially during hard times. Carmen said, “I frequently get messages from other PLs checking in on me and as many students as they can. This situation is not something we train for directly, but with the training we do, and the amazing group of people we have it seems like the group was able to make the best of a bad situation.”
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J1 student Jonathan Grenier was a peer leader for the 2019/2020 school year and wanted to share with the community how the student leader group ended this strange semester.
