Friday night, a group of about 50 students stood outside The Moose. They shivered, huddled, and wrapped their sweatshirts tighter, but refused to go inside. They were waiting for the bus, the wonderful vehicle that would give them a free ride to the highly anticipated and advertised AQ Club Night, a campus program sponsored by RHA, AQRAAD and area residence hall councils.

A short eternity later, the bus arrived. Much to the dismay of the waiting students, the bus was old-school shuttle style with no more than 25 seats. Denied a long-awaited seat, many gave up on Club Night right then and there. Others decided to wait for the next shuttle and give it a chance. After all, Aquinas was spending over $3,000 on this event — it had to be good.

The lucky students that had fit onto the bus rushed into the downtown YMCA. It was Club Night’s first time in this premiere workout facility and they were ready to take advantage of all it had to offer.

Bathing suits in hand, the swimming pools and slides were a top destination for many. Others headed to the rock climbing wall. Still others steered towards the army of flat-screen-equipped elliptical machines. There was one problem — all previously mentioned athletic activities were closed.

The prevention of swimming caused great discontentment. Although the pool eventually opened, students stared sadly into the darkened pool, longing to enjoy the refreshing splash of chlorinated water. Apparently, there had been some misunderstanding and everyone was waiting on lifeguards.

Add that to the fact that remaining options were limited to basketball, volleyball, racquetball, a track and a few exercise machines, and many students were left to dejectedly eat potato chips in the lobby as the YMCA and the Aquinas sponsors worked through their communication issues.

“I thought it was a lot of fun, but it was kind of disappointing that we couldn’t use the rock-climbing wall,” said Drew Anderson, a sophomore resident assistant at St. Joseph. “I thought that would have been really cool.”

Issues were resolved, eventually, and a good deal of the evening was salvaged. People won prizes, went swimming, burned and then consumed calories, but the prevalent sentiment seemed to be that Club Night was really good…last year.