With Easter weekend over and finals looming, students are gearing up to swap Peeps with parties, worksheets with water slides and schedules with summer plans.
That’s right, it’s the last day of class, also known as LDOC. The student-created holiday signals the first taste of summer and a life free of CHEM 101 (or whichever class students were riding the struggle bus to every day), which garners possibly more campus-wide fanfare than any University-mandated holiday ever could.
Not without cause, though: the last day of classes elicits a firestorm of emotions, ranging from happiness and relief to sadness and pre-nostalgia for the end of a memory-filled school year. Who doesn’t need a little emotional catharsis before finals? No matter how many stressful all-nighters or party droughts the year has brought, students can rely on this final celebration without fail, making LDOC festivities a staple of undergraduate life at Carolina.
So why only celebrate the last day? What about the whole weekend?
To make sure LDOC doesn’t end on Friday, the Galore Store is hosting a music festival called BASH! on Saturday featuring local artists and bands. Six musical acts will perform while LDOC celebrators enjoy music, food trucks and interactive screen printing booths. All the proceeds will go directly to student artists.
“(LDOC) is basically an excuse to celebrate all of our hard work throughout the year right before struggling through finals. It’s a way to relax and BASH! by Galore, a non-exclusive event, can give everyone the opportunity to relax and celebrate through music, art and so much more,” Emily Teves, Galore marketing team member, said in a message to the DTH.
BASH! extends the definition of LDOC from celebrations of academic salvation to commemorations of a talent-filled year at UNC. There are so many ways to define a year, and two semesters can embody not only individual academic success but also the collective musical talent that colors student life.
“There is so much talent on this campus, whether it be in the visual arts, music or any other form of expression. BASH! aims to bring our campus together and celebrate each other,” Colby Kirkpatrick, executive director of Galore, said in a message to the DTH.
Galore has hosted three other events this year, each focusing on a different art form: Galore Launch, a spoken-word event called Word-for-Word and Galore’s Comedy Night. The goal of the organization is to bring a diverse group of people together on campus to celebrate different forms of art, Caroline Durante, leader of Galore events, said.
