Students lined up at the top floor of Student Center South Friday night for ComicCon, The Center of Diversity and Inclusion’s final event for this year’s Cultural Connect Week.
The Culture Connect Week series is focused to celebrate and connect various aspects of diversity on the University of Houston’s campus through programs and events.
Hayley Barnes, the Night and Weekend Chair for the Student Program Board, helped organize and run the event.
“We had such a great success last year with our Harry Potter themed event but wanted a way to include all fandoms, from Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, to Marvel and DC.,” Barnes said.
SPB exists to create programs that appeal to the student body by providing an array of diverse activities throughout the year. This year, over 200 students were in attendance.
The event offered free pizza and wings, as well as a drawing to win a GameStop gift card and a customizable fandom cup to take home. For activities, a Wii was set up and connected to a projector allowing students to compete on Mario Party 9. In addition, there was a green screen for novelty comic book cover photos, airbrush face painting, entertainers attending the event in full character and costume and a showing of the movie Ant-Man at the Student Center Theatre.
With SPB’s previous record, students like biology senior Caitlin Luper felt more inclined to volunteer for this year’s event.
“I wanted to come see Ant-Man -even though I’ve seen it before- socialize and get some free pizza,” Luper said. “I’ve actually volunteered at SPB events before and know they can be a lot of fun.”
Throughout the night, there were different fandom quizzes to see which students know the most about their favorite books, movies and shows. Attendees also had a chance to meet Batman, Goku and Vegeta as they walked around the event offering pictures and answering questions.
One of the entertainers, Ken Sevier, attends ComicCon events throughout the year and always feels skeptical when it occurs on university campuses.
“You never know what kind of turnout you’ll get an event like Comiccon on a university campus, but everyone has been like a family tonight, very friendly and open.”
Although Cultural Connect week has now come to a close, there are more events from the Center of Diversity and Inclusion this month. In the celebration of Women’s History Month, there will be events including guest speakers, a panel discussion as well as a book signing. Events can be found here.