Outdoor Movies Safe, Fun
“Nants ingonyama bagithi baba (There comes a lion).” – From the 1994 movie, The Lion King
MONMOUTH, Ill. – Monmouth College students who’ve never been able to sing those words quite right (“Aah, sedenya, baba hee, baba ho,” anyone?) will be able to brush up on the correct pronunciation during a night at the movies Sept. 18.
The third in a month-long series of four movies being shown outdoors on the scoreboard at April Zorn Memorial Stadium, The Lion King screening will begin at 8 p.m. The rain site for the series, which is sponsored by the College’s Association for Student Activity Programming (ASAP), is the Huff Athletic Center, where last week’s movie was shown.
ASAP has taken several steps to keep the movies fun and safe.
“Planning events this year is really weird,” said Cal Bingham ’23 of Calumet City, Ill., a member of ASAP’s executive committee. “We have to do contact tracing at every event. It’s just really in-depth, and we have to make sure we follow all the guidelines. It’s especially hard to find events that actually fit within those restrictions.”
Bingham said the opportunity to break out of the omnipresent Zoom bubble was worth pursuing.
“I think it’s really important, especially for the freshmen this year – since they don’t have many opportunities to be around other people,” he said. “Even though we’re in a social-distanced setting, it’s really nice that they can come together and have events like this that are actually in person and not on Zoom.”
Austin Pfau ’21 of Leland, Ill., attended the Sept. 11 screening of the 2020 film edition of H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man with his girlfriend.
“I’m here to have a nice date night and to have some quality time with her on campus,” he said. “Even though we can’t get out and really do much, we can come here. We can be by ourselves, but we can still see other people and say ‘Hi’ to them, and we can all enjoy the atmosphere of being around other people.”
The fourth and final movie in the outdoor movie series will be Joker on Sept 25. It will also begin at 8 p.m.
“These movie events have been very popular and we look forward to revisiting this idea next semester,” said Doyle.
More information about ASAP events this semester is available on the organization’s various social media platforms, especially Snapchat, where ASAP posts new information almost daily.