With high temperatures and no sign of rain on the horizon, the Division of Student Affairs (DSA), along with the help of Athletics, finished Traditions week with “Strawberry Jam” at the Strawberry Stadium parking garage last Tuesday.

Originally starting in 2008, Strawberry Jam has been the flagship event and closer for the Traditions welcome back week. Although being hosted by DSA in the past, this year saw more help from Athletics to promote the upcoming sports season.

“We geared it towards this year more to have the athletes more involved and as the host of the event to welcome the students to the event and get them involved and interested in southeastern athletics,” said Carley Cryer, marketing and promotions director of athletics. “We teamed up with the Division of Student Affairs because we have always worked together on that, but they really footed the bills [in the past]. So we helped out and that’s one of things we are using the new student fees for is events like this.”

The event featured live music by local cover band “Bottoms Up,” free pizza for everyone, water, ice cream and the debut of a prize wheel that will be featured at future sporting events.

“We will be using the prize wheel at a lot of other events, like we will have it at basketball games, in the union or other events,” said Cryer. “We use it in many different ways and it’s actually interchangeable so every event will have different prizes that we will be handing out.”

Strawberry Jam started at the university center after the Traditions closing remarks with the students who were participating in Traditions following the band from North Campus down to the parking garage located next to Strawberry Stadium. The event started at 6:30 p.m., a change from the past Jams which started at 6 p.m which had left some students this year confused and early for the event.

In the past students were treated to free t-shirts at Strawberry Jam by the Student Government Association (SGA), however this year the SGA changed it by only handing out the t-shirts to students who had completed the Traditions program or had turned in three canned goods or another schools T-shirt.

“The SGA this year has continued its ‘One Pride’ campaign which is to get Southeastern students the same shirt to most athletic events,” said SGA coordinator Beth Richardson. “But instead of just giving it to them, we wanted to empower them to participate in community service so we started the SGA Cans Hunger drive last fall and collected over a thousand canned goods to give to a local food pantry so we expanded that this year and students can either bring in three canned goods, an old high school t-shirt or a college t-shirt that is not Southeastern’s so that we can instill pride in our students to wear the one pride shirt.”

This traditions main event has had the history of being rained on consistently for the past three years, however this year saw a break from the rain with high temperatures. However this did not stop students from showing up for the event.

“It was really hot so I think it is understandable that everyone didn’t stay for the whole duration of everything,” said Cryer. “But I think the heat was really detrimental and other than that we really had an awesome turn out, it was one of the biggest ones we have had so far.”

Despite having to cut the night short due to everyone leaving because of the heat, the event was seen as a success by Jonathan Ambrose, coordinator of the DSA side of Strawberry Jam and Student Union director.

“It’s great to see the community of students come together like that in a large capacity because you have freshman, sophomores, juniors and seniors and the few organizations that I advise, these students expect Strawberry Jam,” said Ambrose. “It’s their culture now and to me that’s a great thing. Anytime you can turn something like that into what it has become, it’s a great accomplishment on the university’s part.”