For years, Campout has been a staple in University tradition. The concept behind the annual tradition remains the same each year, as students camp out and brave the cold weather for the chance to win tickets to the Carolina basketball game. This year’s Campout, however, was slightly different from those of the past, as organizers encouraged students to turn out in pale blue as part of the event’s first-ever “Ugliest Carolina Fan” contest.

Sarah Center, the senator in charge of coordinating the competition, got the idea from something she witnessed at a fraternity gathering.

“A fraternity did an ugliest woman competition where they all dressed up in drag and makeup, so we thought we would do something like that to raise money,” Center said.

Before Campout students were challenged to come decked out in their best Carolina wear and bring a box or jar to collect donations, and that’s exactly what Chris Pope, a junior in physics, did.

“When I first saw [the e-mail], I immediately had a really good idea for a costume,” Pope said. “Former Florida State point guard Sam Cassell once described the fans in Chapel Hill as the wine and cheese crowd, so that was my immediate idea.”

While Pope was fairly optimistic about his participation in the tournament, some students were not so enthused.

“There weren’t a lot of people. We wanted there to be more, but then on the other hand, it’s Campout,” Center said. “Only the hardest N.C. State fans will Campout, and it’s kind of hard to be like wear Carolina blue to our Campout.”

Arialle Crabtree, the senator in charge of the overall planning of Campout, said the lack of participation in the contest had to do mostly with communication.

“It was a great opportunity to raise money for a great cause, but I think that the participation was a little bit lower than we expected. Part of that is that we had problems in securing e-mails between Student Government and the campers.”

The contest winner said he had similar thoughts.

“Personally, I think [e-mail] should be an effective way to communicate, but the fact that I was the only one competing sort of suggests that it wasn’t,” Pope said.

Citing communication as a large factor in the lackluster participation numbers, Crabtree said Student Government may look to create a listserv at the beginning of registration process to reach out to more students in the future.

Whether or not the competition will stick around for future years, however, remains up in the air.

“We haven’t really discussed it,” Center said, though she said she would like to see it stick around.

“It’s a good idea to try again next year. We’ve done it once, and we know more about what we need to do to make it more successful,” Center said.

Crabtree echoed Center’s sentiments.

“I liked the competition and I think the students that participated had a lot of fun with it,” Crabtree said. “Next year, besides publicizing it more, I think we might really try to make it more of an event.”

“This is definitely something we would like to try again,” she said. “It’ll be one of those things where we’ll try it again and see how it goes, so we can sit back and evaluate the results.  

“The first time’s always going to be a little bit rocky and we’re going to have those quirks that you need to work out,” Crabtree said. “Once we get all that straightened out and have a good basis for what we can evaluate, we’ll see if this is something that we want to continue and make an event that we always have at Campout.”