Ice rink is a hit

This semester, Binghamton University opened an outdoor ice rink to provide current students, faculty and staff an outdoor winter activity to engage the campus community during the winter months. The ice rink opened Friday, Feb. 5, and its official last day was Saturday, March 27. During this time, there were 40 days of use with 4,171 total users. Of the total users, 2,810 were unique users to the ice rink. The rink was closed from Feb. 23-March 5 (11 days) due to event restrictions in support of safety measures on campus to deal with the pandemic.

Each day, the ice rink monitor staff wrote down the names of each user, and for contact tracing purposes, recorded their check-in and check-out times at the rink. The staff consisted of 16 undergraduate student employees. The ice rink was open from noon-8 p.m. each day it was open. Overall, usage was very high during the move-in period, and we had a DJ play music on four separate dates (including Rejuvenation Day) and the Starbucks Truck available on two separate dates as well. In addition, a website was created to help support our efforts.