Post-WXCU Day Thoughts

by Roman O’Brien

Members of the management team calling up pizza places

If WXCU Day 2026 wasn’t a learning experience, I don’t know what it was. 

It seemed like at every turn we ran into some sort of problem—whether internally, or with the SCE, or with the bands, or the food, or the beer,  we ran face first into a sturdy brick wall that sprouted out of nowhere. 

We contacted upwards of fifteen bands, and ran into scheduling conflicts with quite a few of them. We asked for a tent in case of adverse weather conditions and were denied. We had two food trucks, but due to both internal and external factors, ended up with exactly zero. We submitted our budget, only to find out we hadn’t actually submitted anything a few weeks before the event. We made promo videos, only to re-work them after we lost our beer backing. Issue after issue after issue kept hitting us like a kick pedal hits the kick drum. 

But when I literally ran into Sabrina Evans-Renkar’s office on the day of the event, apologizing because we no longer had any food trucks, she sat me down and told me this: “It’s okay. It’s a learning experience.”

“It’s a club,” she said, “but it’s also a class. We’re here to learn. And I think we’ve learned a lot from this year’s experience planning WXCU Day.” 

After that, we quickly made a plan: I would contact the management team, and then we’d reach out to the SCE and various food places and we’d see if we could get a large order done by six o’clock. Mind you, I had class at two, and wouldn’t be out until at least three-fifteen. Still, I contacted my fellow management members, and a plan was put into motion. 

At three-fifteen, I made a beeline for the CMC, where our general manager was already set to meet me, and then we went to Huber-Spielman to meet two other members of the management team, who were already working on finding us food and a card from the SCE. 

After calling about five pizza places, our GM called Domino’s and placed an order, and when he was finished, we all jumped up and high-fived, like you would see in a cheesy movie after the protagonists’ wacky plan finally works. A few hours later, I and another management member, Colleen, got into my car and picked up the fifty pizzas we needed, and I started laughing at the sheer insanity of it all. Things had somehow worked out.

Food? Check.

Colleen and I with my car full of pizza

We got back, and the bands were setting up. Each of the acts went really well, and I was happy with the people we’d landed on. 

Music? Check.

We’d gotten a massive amount of soda and water the day before and spent way less money than we’d thought thanks to a sale, and we had barrels of drinks already out on the lawn. Even without our proposed beer, we still had a pretty sufficient selection. 

Drinks? Check.

Though it had looked like rain only a few hours before—I’d seen dark gray clouds rolling in from the north—it ended up being a beautiful night, and I managed to avoid being bitten by mosquitos somehow. 

Weather issues? No problem. 

At the end of the night, I sat in shock. Somehow, despite everything, we’d managed to pull off our second WXCU Day. We’d had food, we’d had drinks, and we’d had a good time. What else could you want?

It definitely was a learning process. We know what we won’t be doing next year. We know what we need to get a jump on, and we know what we need to fix. But all things considered, it definitely went better than 2025’s WXCU Day (because we didn’t cancel it.) And it was a pretty good day looking back on it.

Hopefully, we can make next year’s WXCU Day even better.