Come next fall, UM students will be the recipients of Category 5’s generous gift to the university center-a new sound system.
Category 5, a branch of student government and the spirit programming board on campus, began thinking about buying a new sound system after their first pep rally last year. They are responsible for putting on all the pre-game events on campus for boosting school spirit.
“The sound system now is antiquated. The purpose of our pep rallies are that they’re supposed to be loud, fun, interactive,” said former Category 5 co-chair and current member, JD Barbosa. “We’ve been thinking about it since our first pep rally last year, but we didn’t have the budget.”
Barbosa said that it is very difficult to hear anything on the current sound system.
“There is no sound system. Activities will be better than before and every club can use it,” said Category 5 co-chair Carlos Echeverri, a sophomore majoring in psychology and mathematics.
Echeverri believes that with the new sound system improving the activities on campus, more students will get involved in events.
“It will promote school spirit overall,” he said.
The system should be installed in the Rock area sometime this summer, Barbosa said. The speakers will be hidden in the trees and the control panel will be located in the UC.
“We’re doing our shopping. We’re getting quotes. We’ve contacted the contractors,” he said.
The people responsible for getting the system are Barbosa, Category 5 co-chair Kimberly Racciato, and Category 5 advisor Webb Morgan.
Category 5 is looking at a price range between five and eight thousand dollars, which they can easily afford, Barbosa said, with the $30,000 annual budget that the student activities fee provides for them.
“We try to spend our budget as wisely as we can,” Echeverri said. “You can say we’ve been stingy with the money over the year so we had a lot left over.”
“Since this is the first year that Category 5 has a budget we thought we should make a capital investment. We feel like it’s going to be an investment for us and the university,” Barbosa said.
“We’re going to do our best to get it done before next semester,” Echeverri said.