Pack‑A‑Critter draws long lines, lightens midterm stress
Students packed the Student Union Ballroom on Wednesday evening for Pack‑A‑Critter: Bear Edition, lining up early to build their own stuffed animals before supplies ran out.
Hosted by the Student Union Activities Board, the 5 p.m. event invited students to choose, stuff and take home a critter, complete with tongue‑in‑cheek “birth certificates” for their new companions. Pack‑A‑Critter is held almost every two semesters, but this edition stood out to host James Stevenson because it offered more options and more bears than usual. Looking over the crowd, he said he hadn’t expected the line to stretch as far as it did and believes the turnout shows the event could run every semester.
For some students, the promise of a free, customizable bear was enough to leave class early. Senior Jesus Ramirez said he heard from his girlfriend that SUAB would be giving away bears and decided to come. He arrived about 4:20 p.m. to beat the rush, only to find the line already long and said he hadn’t expected to see that many people waiting. Ramirez planned to pick out a shirt, stuff his bear, add a heart and fill out a birth certificate before giving the bear a name and jokingly calling it their “imaginary child.”
Freshmen used the event as both a first‑year outing and an easy way to plug into campus life. Freshman Kate Myers said she and her roommate decided to come after seeing a sign for Pack‑A‑Critter earlier in the week and were surprised by how long the line was when they arrived about 5 p.m. She admitted she came mostly because she thought the bears were cute and hadn’t realized she could add designs or name her bear. Fellow freshman Brinkley Niles said the long line gave her “high hopes” for the experience and joked that she might give her bear an inanimate‑object name just because it would be funny.
Friends also used the event as a way to unwind together before midterms. Stacy Dawson said she came because “the teddy bears were really cute” and heard about the event through Instagram, where SUAB had promoted Pack‑A‑Critter. She picked a “funky”‑looking bear she called “the special one” and planned to keep him in her dorm, saying the long line showed students needed something to lighten the mood. Her friend Anya Mustonen, who learned about the event from Dawson, said making a bear in college “is fun forever” and that events like Pack‑A‑Critter help with stress because they give students something playful to look forward to.
Other students found the event through campus channels and appreciated both the organization and the price point. Katelyn Gainey, who works at Lasso, said she first heard about the event from promotional spots playing on the TVs at work and thought it would make a “cute little bonding experience” with friends. She said the lines were well organized and easy to move through and that having a small, squeezable stuffed animal helps with stress as midterms approach. Gainey added that the fact the bears were free to students who might not otherwise spend money on a stuffed animal and said the T‑shirt and patch options made the event more appealing because they allowed everyone to accessorize and customize their critter.
For Stevenson, that mix of free gifts, personalization and simple fun is the point. As students filtered through tables of bears, shirts, patches and stuffing, he said his favorite part of Pack‑A‑Critter is watching students leave their dorms, smile, meet new people and walk away with something they built themselves. He said the crowd in the ballroom showed that, in the middle of the semester, sometimes all students need is a free stuffed bear and a chance to feel like kids again for an hour.
