On Saturday, April 6, the Wilkes University Hindu Spirituality Club (HSC) hosted their annual Color Wars event. In previous years, the event has been held on the newly renamed “Fenner Quad,” previously known as the greenway, on the Wilkes University campus.

This year, however, the event was held on the grassy area between Evans and Roth residence halls due to the new renovations that were made. The event is a celebration of a popular ancient Hindu festival, Holi, also known as the festival of colors.

“The celebration takes place for two days. The first day represents the victory of good versus evil and the second day is the beginning of spring. On the second day, we play with the colors because the colors portray the different spring colors,” said Vidhi Thakar, vice president of HSC and junior pharmacy major.

Thus, the event is centered around Holi colored powder packets. The participants opened them up and threw them at each other, allowing everyone to become covered from head to toe. The colored packets also naturally cover the grass and the sidewalks in the area they are being thrown which is why the event could no longer be held on the new grass in the Fenner Quad.

“My friends who are helping are a little annoyed. Hopefully the location does not affect the event, however, it is in the back of campus so people may not see it as vividly, but I’m sure it will be fine and the turn out will be great,” said Nisha Patel, junior pre-dental biology major, prior to the event.

Due to the anticipated lack of natural attraction to the event due to the location being moved, members of HSC resorted to other means of advertisement.

They put up several flyers around campus and held a table during club hours this past Thursday where they gave out henna tattoos and white t-shirts to wear to the event for $5.

Despite the concern, over 60 students attended the event and the location proved to  be everything but an issue.

From 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., the people who attended were flinging the colored powder in the air, dumping it onto each other’s heads, throwing it into each others faces, and sneaking up behind one another to throw the colors at each other. If someone had too much of one color on them, someone else would make sure to dump another color onto them until they were essentially a walking rainbow.

“I expected a nice, gentle introduction, but they just whip the color at you,” said Niharika Gupta, junior pre med major.

HSC took the liberity in calling the event color wars to possibly attract more people to the event that may not be a part of Hindu culture. Different schools celebrate it as well, but HSC wanted to give it a twist.

“Color wars is a different approach to celebrating it because many people think of color runs or color walks, but it is actually part of the Holi culture…and you don’t have to run,” said Jasleen Kaur, president of HSC and junior nursing major.

HSC’s goal with the event was to allow people to experience something outside of their culture while having a good time and according to the turn out and the student response, they succeeded.

“It’s great to be able to take part in a cultural experience  at your school. I’ve never been a part of the Holi culture, so that’s really exciting,” said Emily Kaminieki, junior medical lab science major.