ESKARA 2022 on Green Waves
After three years of postponement due to the global pandemic, ESKARA 2022 was held offline from September 29th to 30th at the Humanities and Social Sciences Campus (HSSC) of Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU). ESKARA 2022 inherits SKKU’s fall festival’s legacy, which honors the school’s founding anniversary. On the 29th, several student booths were set up at the Large Playground. Also, competitions between the HSSC and the Natural Sciences Campus (NSC) were held for two days, which consisted of individual games, including the Golden Bell contest, and team sport matches. The HSSC won the overall competition with 507 points, compared to the NSC’s 315 points. Lee Jin-yu, a student majoring in Architecture who participated in the competition, said, “Being able to come to the HSSC and engage with the students in different activities and games was truly a pleasure.” Meanwhile, club activity performances and stages of invited artists filled the scenes of ESKARA with excitement. On the first night, Boramiyu and 10cm hit the stage, and on the second night, BOL4, IVE, and the AOMG crew: Lee Hi, Coogie, Gray, and Simon Dominic, along with other exceptional artists, performed on stage.
The Sustainable Integration of HSSC and NSC
ESKARA is now taking over SKKU’s original fall festival. The core change lies in that ESKARA will become a combined festival between the HSSC and the NSC. Before the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID- 19) outbreak, the fall festival was held separately on each campus every September; thus, it was hard to establish a unified school culture between the two campuses and emphasize the idea that while apart, the two campuses are one. Therefore, Spring, the 54th student council, designed ESKARA 2022 to create an environment where the students of the HSSC and NSC could unite. To allow more Kingos from the NSC to participate in ESKARA 2022, Spring converted lectures online and added 20 more HSSCNSC buses during the festival period. Furthermore, the first SKKU cheering festival, “1398,” led by Kinggo Cheerleaders, was held during the second night. This brought students from the two campuses together and strengthened their bonds. Furthermore, Spring and the student council presidents of each undergraduate departments participated in a joint declaration to establish a sustainable ESKARA festival culture. The declaration states that ESKARA will not be a one- time event, but will remain to become an integrated festival culture. Jang Pil-kyu, the 54th student president of the HSSC, said, “The student council ought to make students feel that the HSSC and NSC are one. Students from the two campuses should be able to graduate with shared memories, making them truly Kingos.”