A weekend of traveling, cheering, dancing, meeting new people, coloring, singing, screaming, and to top it all off improving leadership skills is what NEACURH at SUNY Geneseo entailed. You may be wondering… what on earth is “NEACURH?” Well, NEACURH is the North East Affiliate of College and University Residence Halls, long isn’t it? Basically, it is an entirely student run organization that encompasses Residence Hall Councils and National Residence Hall Honorary’s across the north east. Each year, NEACURH brings together college institutions and student leaders from Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Nova Scotia, Rhode Island, Vermont, Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland. This year’s theme was “Mooselodeon,” moose because it is the mascot of the region and the –elodeon comes from our favorite 90s Nickelodeon shows! Marist was able to send five delegation members, and one advisor on a five and a half hour journey to Geneseo New York. In weeks before the conference we had to prepare spirit stuff, which entails clothespins—which would be rapidly traded away, a banner—to show our school spirit, and a “Role Call” video—which Maureen Degnan created—it was to the Rocket Power theme song and involved our delegation riding scooters, pretending to surf, and chasing each other around on campus. Our delegation was more than excited to attend this conference, Anthony Zanin and I had attended a National Conference over the summer in Colorado, but this time around we had three new delegates!!! Along with Maureen Degnan there were two new freshman delegates—Melina Puzino and Samantha Policano; we decorated our van with car paint, gassed up, and hit the road to what would be one of the most exciting weekends us delegates had experienced the entire semester!

Our first evening there was Role Call night, where we each school showed their video. We earned the first spirit points of the weekend for getting up in front of everyone at the conference and singing “an ode to a staff member.” Our sly delegation had creatively changed the words to the SpongeBob theme song and sang to a staff member that Anthony had been in touch with weeks leading up to the conference. That night was filled with t-shirt making, henna tattoos, painting trees, coloring, meeting new people, playing with oversize Jenga blocks, spin art, performances from the school, and SO much more! On Saturday the delegates and I attended leadership programming to bring new and AWESOME ideas back to our school! The programs were anywhere from diversity, services and recognition on campus, programing ideas for your school, and most of all, leadership.  A few of us even presented some of these  programs at the conference to other college students and Anthony and Melina both won awards for having the best passive programs as well. Our long journey was a BLAST! We all went home with smiles on our faces! If you are reading this blog and felt like YOU want to experience the greatest leadership conference you’ll EVER attend, feel free to contact me at Nicole.Boschetti1@marist.edu!