Casino Night: ERAU's Most Unhinged Event of the Year, Lest It Never Change
Campus was abuzz in the week leading up to the spring semester's beloved gambling-adjacent university sponsored event. Students were heard in hallways, on the quad, in the Student Union, all asking: “Are you going to Casino Night?”
Arguably the best event of the year, Casino Night is Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s (ERAU) ‘big bash’ party, led by students on the Board of Campus Activities (BCA) and Student Government Association (SGA).
Casino Night has been a spring semester ERAU tradition since, well, at least 1993. Casino Night posters of years past are hung in the mostly forgotten, least traveled hallway of the Student Union, leading from the student government zone to the Horizons Newspaper office.
As a phenomenally rated “C-” party scene university by ranking website Niche, Casino Night stands out as one of the biggest events of the year – an impressive feat considering no alcohol is served. Casino Night falls second only to Octoberwest, ERAU’s homecoming week.
Prescott-based casino rentals group Vegas Knights hauled an impressive number of casino game tables into the Eagle Gym: craps, roulette, poker and so on. Students in the entry line were quick to boast they’d be counting cards at black jack.
No “real” money was to be exchanged on casino night, though there would be very real prizes: a cooler, suitcase, blender, grill, crock pot, projector, soundbar, Nintendo Switch, TV, computer monitor, bean bag chair and mountain bike, to name a few.
BCA bucks and poker chips could be exchanged for raffle tickets, which students would then place in buckets in front of their desired prize.
There's been a rumor circulating that some students printed fake BCA money. If true, it only serves to increase the “unhinged-ness” meter by a few increments.
All bets were off in the Bingo corner: bingo fanatics were spotted playing two, four, six cards simultaneously, vying for the elusive (well, maybe not so elusive) BCA bucks. Bingo is known to be a lucrative game, but not because of its game mechanics. BCA and SGA members were known to occasionally toss out BCA bucks to all players.
I recorded a portion of a blackout bingo game to provide a little window into the atmosphere of Casino Night 2022. You'll hear the general chatter of the crowd, bingo numbers being called out and the tinny music blanketing the gym. The person sitting next to me gets particularly distressed 5:20 onwards as they inch closer to achieving a blackout.
Casino Night, with its inexplicable buffet of Uncrustables, Hostess cupcakes, Dr Pepper and vegetable ranch cups, is a bright night in a sea of stressful days for students at ERAU.
Though I had not won any prizes at Casino Night, I stumbled into a treasure trove of my own, one slightly more immaterial and substantially less useful than something like an air fryer. Hidden away behind the 1996 poster was a photo collage, last uncovered who knows when. The collage included gems like this red spikey haired student and a Twister game victim.
The left student appears to be studying a turbine diagram of some sort, one I'm able to recognize from my Space Propulsion course. The cycle of learning continues, 26 years on, as does Casino Night, timeless in its repetition, fleeting for the students with but a few chances to attend while studying at ERAU. I’m glad, even grateful I went, in my bittersweet final year.