In a first for Cal State Monterey Bay, Associated Students hosted a silent disco event Thursday night. Dozens of students filed into the Divarty Quad, donning colorfully lit headphones and enjoying an evening of singing and dancing – much to the bewilderment of some passerbys.
At silent discos, attendees use wireless headphones to listen to music broadcast via radio signals. They often feature multiple channels, which enable a variety of music within a single event.
“I did, like, a test run at a conference I went to last year, but I’ve never actually attended one…I’d honestly never really heard of it until I went to that conference. So I feel like it’s something different, something new that’s not one of our original programs,” said fourth-year kinesiology major and AS Campus Programs Specialist Amber Dimassimo.
Each of the three channels available at Thursday’s event corresponded to both a headphone display color and a genre of music; channel one, for example, largely played dance music and was represented by blue displays. As attendees noticed their neighbors belting the words to their favorite songs, they would quickly switch channels and join in, resulting in alternating waves of blue, red and green reflecting the three DJs’ most popular selections.
“You have complete control, and I kind of like that because hopefully it gains more audience, even with those who don’t like music that loud. If they want to be in the environment, they have complete control over the volume and what they want to listen to,” said Dimassimo.
Along with being more accessible to would-be listeners than traditional concerts, silent discos are also inoffensive to nearby non-participants – an important detail, given that the Divarty Quad is nestled between several residence halls.
“I think the space really brings a lot of uniqueness to it. We’re very small. But I think just the fun, quirky ambience of a silent disco attracts a bunch of people, and I think especially for this campus’s atmosphere, a silent disco is a lot more engaging,” said Sarah Pronge, also an AS campus programs specialist.
The unconventional and mildly awkward nature of the event seemed to break the ice between students, who could often be heard piercing the quiet of an otherwise ordinary evening on campus to shout questions at each other: “What are your names?” “Are you a freshman?”
“I feel like a lot of students come here not really knowing anybody. But hopefully by the end of the night, they at least make a friend,” said Bethzy Cisneros, a second–year Human Development and Family Science major in training as a student orientation leader. “I definitely recommend people come out at least once every semester.”