Engineering students will be putting down the books and putting on masks for a night.
The UA’s Engineering Student Council is holding a ball for the first time since the 1990s on May 10, according to Ari Auerbach, a chemical engineering sophomore and the social outreach chair for the ESC.
The ball, which will be held at the Arizona Historical Society, is masquerade-themed and will be open to all students, said Ericka Tucker, a mining engineering sophomore. There will be food, dancing and photos, and guests 21 and over can purchase a wristband to gain access to the open bar.
The ball is supposed to be a fun social event that will give everyone a chance to relax, Auerbach said.
“The whole goal of Engineering Student Council is to give engineers an opportunity to do something social,” Auerbach said. “We do so much studying that … we deserve a night off.”
ESC had some trouble finding a place to hold the ball due to limited funds, Tucker said. ESC is not funded by the College of Engineering, so the main fundraiser for the event was the Engineering Career Fair. ESC decided to hold the event at the Arizona Historical Society, which gave it a great deal because it is affiliated with the UA, Tucker said.
The ball, which used to be an annual event for ESC, stopped being held when the council lost momentum back in the 1990s, according to Auerbach. This is the first year that ESC has made a big comeback on campus, Auerbach added. While in the past, members of ESC seemed to join just to include it on their résumé, this year saw more motivated people join ESC with a legitimate interest in making it better, he said.
The ball is entirely run by ESC. The DJ is a member of the Freshman Engineering Council and the photographer is the incoming president of ESC, so it has been a team effort, Tucker said.
“I’m really excited to see how everyone is going to be pulled together to make it all work out,” Tucker said.
Auerbach said he is looking forward to bringing the event back.
“[The ball] is something that hasn’t been around for so long and it’s reinstituting it in a way that I think will pay homage to how big it used to be,” he said.
All of the details of planning the event have already been worked out, so all that’s left is to see how it turns out, Tucker said.
More than 150 tickets have already been sold, and ESC members are excited to see how big the event gets, Auerbach said.
Michael Flammia, a chemical engineering sophomore, is one student planning to attend the ball. He said he is looking forward to the masquerade theme. Flammia added that he decided to go to the ball because it sounded different from typical college events.
“It seemed like something that was going to be really fun, something that’s different from what you normally do in college,” Flammia said. “You normally don’t have the opportunity to do stuff like this, especially being an engineering major, being really busy all the time.”
