Chirpy girls in different coloured tees running around the college campus, bouncers guarding the gate, organisers working on arranging for their activities, students registering themselves for various events --- this was the scene at Arthashastra 2012, the annual inter-collegiate festival of St Francis Degree College for Women on Friday.
The 10th edition organised by the Commerce Organisation for Emerging Entrepreneur (COFEE), student body of the Department of Commerce, brought together more than 9,000 students from over 150 colleges in the city.
This year adopted a youthcentric theme, Yuva, which aimed at highlighting the role played by youth in nation-building focused on 'Youth of today - Leaders of tomorrow', be it in the field of governance, entrepreneurship, social responsibility, corporate leadership, innovation or revival of fine arts and culture.
Contributions by youth in different sectors across the globe in the last two years were displayed on banners on the first floor of the college building.
Aakanksha Shukla, a B.Com final year student and one of the COFEE organisers, explained, “Everything about the festival is celebrating us, the youth.
Every art work that has been put up here, has been put up by our 50- member COFEE team.” The day-long festival included 10 educative events including, Mr and Miss CEO — Enterprising young people in a unique contest, Mock Stock Exchange — Play against investors and make millions, Biz-Wiz — Business IQ quiz, Turn Coast Debate — a debate competition, ADMAD, Junk yard, Treasure Hunt, Descramble ‘D’ Pixels — Interpret pictures, Grafitee — T-Shirt Designing and Amazed — A maze game.
Mock Stock Exchange, surprisingly, turned out to be the most popular among the youngsters with about 37 teams participating in it. Event in-charge of Mock Stock Exchange, Shruti, said, “The event was crazy. All of us worked so much on updating the figures. Everybody had so much fun.” Also drawing attention were Amazed and ADMAD.
Mr and Miss CEO, the traditional event of every college fest, had the crowd in splits. Kumar from NIFT and Daphnie from St Francis were declared as Mr and Miss CEO respectively. Apart from these various competitions, there was also an entertainment section and many food stalls for students. Games like Angry Birds, dart games and many more were organised.
Another highlight of the festival was the flash mob, which took the crowd by a surprise. 20 students from different colleges danced to various numbers for about eight minutes at the Quadrangle in the campus. Sister Alphonsa Vattoly, principal, St Francis Degree College for Women, said she was happy with the way the fest was held. “I have given all the freedom to my kids and they have put up a great show. All the things went in order, and there were no disturbances. The crowd was also well behaved,” she said.