Alumni Park was alight Saturday night as hundreds of students buzzed about during Late Night ‘SC’s “Late Night LA” event, part of the Spring 2024 Trojan Welcome Experience. While only around 50 people were in line when the park opened to partygoers, many more soon joined and formed long lines to interact with the event’s many attractions that promised to “bring LA to YOU!” 

Students were given a ticket that they could redeem at one of two food trucks, Poutine Brothers for fries and meats or Richeeze Melts for various grilled cheese sandwiches. Also on the night’s menu were free mini donuts where students could choose between a variety of sugary toppings.

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Though the event page listed no restrictions as to who could show up, Ryan Long, a student worker at the event, said the purpose of the event was to ensure newer students could find friends as the new semester begins.

“Its purpose is pretty simple,” Long said. “It’s to welcome all of those spring admits and transfers and try and get them integrated into the Trojan community as safely and as quickly as possible while still having a good time.”

Long, a sophomore majoring in psychology and Middle East studies, said he has seen events like these have great success in the past, as he himself was a spring admit last year.

“I met a ton of people here at this big Welcome Week event [last year],” he said. “It’s just a time where everybody’s looking to meet someone. So at a big event like this, where you’re doing tie-dye or being really bad at skee-ball or eating doughnuts or something like that, it’s just really easy to meet new people.”

Aside from food, “Late Night LA” offered a multitude of other interactive activities, including carnival games, bouncy houses, a caricature artist and a tie-dye station where students could dye a pair of white socks using red, green and purple dyes. 

A unique feature of the tie-dye station was that, in order to pick up bottles of dye to use at a nearby table, students had to give their student ID to Long and could only get them back when they returned the bottles. Long said this was to prevent previous occurrences when students would not return the bottles. 

Adrian Teh, a senior in an international exchange program studying law and finance, said he heard about the event when he was scrolling through various USC webpages to familiarize himself with the campus.

“Campus culture is really nice so far. I’m looking forward to seeing how it’s like next week,” he said. “[I was] pleasantly surprised by the free food and stuff. The portions are small, but I get it. It’s a big event. I guess I’m just a little bit disappointed that there weren’t any drinks.”

Scarlett Goh and Sydney Reza, both freshman spring admits majoring in international relations, said they were made aware of the event through an email from USC about orientation programs. Goh said she chose to attend the event both because she knew people that would be going and because she wanted to make more friends. 

“It seems like a good way to meet new people,” Reza said. ”And it kind of seems like everyone’s here for the same reason: to get to know more people.”

The next event in the Trojan Welcome experience will be RecFest Jan. 11.