Fernando Diaz
Those who remember a time before COVID may recall Coffee House, a special weekly event hosted by the Student Association during which students could gather, chat, and enjoy refreshments while listening to musical performances by fellow Cardinals. Now, after a year of being cancelled due to the pandemic, Coffee House is finally back.
“Unfortunately, we had to cancel Coffee House and other in-person events to comply with pandemic restrictions,” Yash Ugavelkar, Co-Chair for Coffee House, said. “Thankfully, now that things are slowly getting back to normal, we had the chance to bring it back.”
So far, there have been four Coffee Houses this semester, with the first one having been hosted on September 29th. They take place in Burghy’s Lounge in the ACC at 8 pm every Wednesday.
“It’s actually been really successful so far,” Lisette Linares, Senator of Activities, said. “We get more performers and more people every week.”
However, it wasn’t always so smooth. At first, the SA struggled to fill up seats and time slots for the events.
“It was sometimes challenging at first to attract people the first night and get performers to cover the two hours of Coffee House,” Ugavelkar said. “But more and more people joined after that. So far, the reintegration of Coffee House has been successful.”
In fact, Ugavelkar mentioned that Coffee Houses currently have more participants now than they did before COVID, and they’re much “more crowded” now.
The first night, SA officers including Linares stood around the ACC promoting Coffee House, encouraging students to come attend and check the performers out.
“It’s amazing to be able to interact with students and help find performers,” Linares said. “It was a little challenging at first because I’m new to this, but I soon got used to it. It’s a very rewarding experience.”
Sohayla Erroui performed at multiple Coffee Houses. She sang covers of various RnB and pop songs.
“It’s amazing to be able to perform at Coffee House,” Erroui said. “It’s such a well-organized event and the participants are so kind. I absolutely loved it.”
