Student Life is searching for dates to reschedule Rumpus which was previously set to take place on Jan. 7 – 8. With the new occurrence of the Omnicron Covid variant and the rising number of cases within the Darlington community, the Student Life Office made this decision focusing on the safety of the students rather than the traditions surrounding the time of Rumpus.

“Obviously we don’t want to move rumpus,” Brant Evans, Dean of Student Life, said. “We love having it that first week and we get back, but we felt like the responsible thing in this situation with us kind of having a peek in Omicron variant was to at least put it on hold.”

Health and living conditions for dorm students were one of the main priorities in the Student Life Office’s decision to move Rumpus to an undisclosed date in February. 

“The biggest concern is we do have 180 dorm students on this campus. And it worries us if we have a lot of them getting COVID because there’s really nowhere to go,” Evans said. You know, our day students can go home and stay at home. These kids can’t really do that.”

This decision was also partially due to the conflicts brought by spring sports and how many students are indisposed once their seasons get into full swing. However, this isn’t the main focus of the prefects. 

“I think that moving it back, we had a lot of dorm students who still hadn’t come back yet,” Joey Kight, head day prefect in Moser house, said. “So moving it back actually helped us a lot by getting all of our people here on time.”

Noah Morris, head dorm prefect in Neville house, searched for positive outcomes in such an unexpected occurrence.

“Rumpus being postponed doesn’t really affect Neville as much as other houses,” Morris said. “Perhaps it gives us a chance to further refine our lip-sync.”

Changes that may occur to Rumpus due to covid are a concern for some students, yet Evans hopes to keep it as close to normal as Covid will allow.  

“I think there might be a couple of changes with some of the indoor things that are happening. But our hope is that we can get it as close as we can possibly get to a normal rumpus,” Evans said. “So keep your fingers crossed and do your part and try to stay healthy, and hopefully, we can.  But I think the good thing is a lot of our events can be done outside.”