Meramec Student Government Association hosts a casino night.
BY: BRENDAN SMITH
Staff Writer
On Thursday Feb. 27, STLCC – Meramec’s Student Government Association (SGA) held a casino night in the Meramec Cafeteria from 6 pm to 9 pm, and was a way for the SGA to raise cans for the Student Advocacy and Resource Center (SARC), which helps students who are in need of food and other resources.
“You could bring additional cans in, so it was a little more enticing, they would actually give you an additional amount of chips for every can you brought in,” participant Ethan Beckner said. “It was not only a way of getting people involved, but also still contributing towards a good cause.”
While the event had between 20 and 30 students attending, the SGA was able to collect over 100 cans for SARC. At the beginning of the event, students received a ticket for $5,000 in coins to gamble with, and each can that was donated would give them an extra $500.
“It was a smaller group, smaller than what I would’ve wanted, but I think it was intimate, and it worked fine for the event,” SGA President Tony Sambo said. “We raised between 100 and 150 cans, with my estimate being about 120 cans, just from looking at it, visually.”
After receiving the tickets, students would pick which table to start with.
“We had roulette, a craps table, blackjack tables and Texas Hold Em’ which is just poker,” Sambo said.
Once at the tables, the staff hired for the event would start the games and would converse with the attendees.
“I only participated in blackjack and roulette, and there was a guy at the craps table who was telling a bunch of stories and was very personable,” Beckner said, “Everyone had their own personalities, and you could tell they knew what they were doing, which really added to the feeling of a casino.”
The set up for the event was unproblematic, with the campus life manager having previous experience setting up a casino night and already knowing what company they wanted to hire.
“The campus life manager, Sean Cooney, worked for SIU previously and they do a casino night there pretty consistently, so he already had a company in mind for it,” Sambo said. “All that really happened was us talking to Katie to rent out the cafeteria. Then we talked to Sean, Sean went to the company and offered for them to come for a certain amount of money and do it, and then we went and bought prizes [for the raffle].”
With the amount of cans collected, the SGA is hoping to hold more casino nights in the future, even though some of the organizers will be graduating, Sambo included.
“I will be graduating, but I hope that the SGA follows in the footsteps of holding casino nights, and more canned food drives or drives generally,” Sambo said.
