The Tartan

By The Tartan Editorial Board

Editorials featured in the Forum section are solely the opinions of their individual authors.

What a Carnival, huh? After our Greek-affiliated staff members wiped the sawdust off their helmets, our musically-theater inclined folks took off their show makeup, and the rest of us got over our hangovers, we hung up our Carnival hats to make a newspaper this week. Did you all have fun, too? 

It’s an extremely unique time of year, one that first-years will learn to anticipate and the last-years will come to miss. Few schools have a non-spring break break in the spring, and none have developed the odd and specific traditions we have.

Carnival is also the only time of year that throngs of non-student, non-professor people appear on our campus. This is rather jarring, as attending this school often makes one forget that babies and older millennials exist in quite large numbers. Seriously, think for a moment how many families you saw over the last three days versus how many you saw the entire year prior to Carnival.

We are often isolated from the city we live in, and seeing crowds of parents and kids swarm through midway and the Cut reminds us how rarely we see other people. Though swanky neighborhoods and fun activities are but a free bus ride away, we usually have things like problem sets that make it hard to find time to get out. And the city doesn’t come to us, so we often exist in our own little campus bubble with our peers alone keeping us company.

This is not necessarily the case for all schools. A lot of schools (by which we mean those with big football teams) are often a much larger fixture of their surrounding community. 

The Post-Gazette and the Pittsburgh City Paper report on University of Pittsburgh sports, and college sports are generally considered a pretty big deal in the south (the University of Alabama football stadium is the tenth largest stadium in the world by seating capacity). Many colleges are plugged into the communities a bit more than our school, in which 70 percent of first-years admitted in 2022 are from out-of-state. No shame being from out-state, obviously — most of us on the EdBoard are — but this fact produces an interesting dynamic between the school and the city. 

Carnival is the time Carnegie Mellon gets to close the gap between us and the city. It’s a week where our school becomes a destination for fun, and student work is proudly displayed to our neighbors who are welcomed in. 

The real root of Carnival, though, is pretty simple: It’s marketing. 

Big football schools get huge amounts of money for their sports programs. Carnegie Mellon, lacking Division One athletics, has developed a unique, non-football way to generate its own buzz. 

Carnival is a tool this university has sharpened to project the image of a quirky, artsy, techy school where people lie face-down in racing pods and build Wreck-it-Ralph houses for fun. For whatever reason, students go hog-wild at these things. Something deep in the Carnegie Mellon psyche yearns for these silly, time-consuming events, often at great costs to our well-being. The school lets us use power tools and scissor lifts unattended, and in turn, we make the university look good. And we students are more than happy to hold up our end of the bargain.

There is an enormous level of student involvement and oversight required to make Booth, Buggy, the musical, the talent show, the Carnival entrance, and the million other Carnival things happen (join Spring Carnival Committee if you want to learn the nuts and bolts of it, they’d love your help). The passion we collectively have for this work is evident, and the commitment people display is undeniable. God help us, maybe our hearts really are in the work.

It is the main time when Carnegie Mellon gets to cement its brand and entice alumni to return. It’s also a time when us students get to sink hours of our lives into things we will probably never get to do again. It’s hectic, but it’s a hell of a time. 

Carnival can also suck. It can be tiresome and stressful, and it can also engender deep feelings of FOMO for those not immediately taped to a BORG by 5 p.m. on Wednesday. If you used this Carnival to sleep and watch a movie, good for you. You probably needed it.

As the amusement park rides pack up, it’s clear that Carnival is a whole lot of marketing — there’s no coincidence that this lines up well with the admission of new students. But that’s no excuse to become cynical about it. 

Appreciate that we go to a school that lets students do these things and make the most of it; and if you get the chance again, see if you can do something new during your next Carnival. You only get so many.