“I’m dropping 100, on the field.” Followed by a “Woohoo,” she got her “money” back, turned around, took a sip of the boba, high fived with her friend, and left the table with a smile on her face.

No, this is not Las Vegas, or Macau, or any casino. It is the 2019 Webb annual Casino Night.

As a joint event of Student Government and Jameson Dorm, Casino Night took place in Hooper Student Center this year instead of Jameson Deck due to the inclement weather. Students and faculty received chips based on how they dressed up and started to get involved into games around 7 p.m.. As more and more people joined the event, Student Government, Jameson residents and participants hyped up hooper. At around 9 p.m. winners were announced through the raffle.

Celine Lau (‘22), who got picked by the raffle three times, was the luckiest player that night. “I felt pretty excited. I didn’t really understand that I won that many times at first, probably due to the shock. Once it hit me, I guess it was very fulfilling.”

Upper Jameson prefect, Albert Xu (‘20) said, “We had to begin our initial setup at 10 in the morning until lunch, and begin our second setup at around 5.”

Jameson resident Jordan Fang (‘19), who volunteered to help out during the process, said, “Well I mean, just the fact that it’s at Hooper, so we had to move everything that was in Jameson all the way down to Hooper, and moved all the lights from Alamo. Also actually decorating the place is a lot more complicated than having it at Jameson.”

After a long day of preparation, Albert said, “Beginning early and preparing boba for the student body of Webb did not feel as tough as it sounded, because the joy you get watching the people enjoying their time ultimately outweighs the time you spent preparing.”

Ken Rosenfeld, humanities department faculty and head of Jameson dorm, was one of the main organizers of the event. He said, “One of the major difficulties is to go ahead and make a plan because there are so many variables. We don’t know the number of people that’s going to participate, so we had to plan everything based on the record from previous years. ”

Charlie Chen (‘19), WSC Student Government president, went from a participant last year to one of the main organizers of the entire event this year. He said, “It’s not like I have more work to do, it’s just that I have to make sure that nothing goes wrong. Generally if nothing goes wrong then my job is pretty easy, but I just have to be mindful that we have got everything taken care of.”

Charlie’s job turned out to be easy that night, as all the games operated very well and all the participants enjoyed themselves no matter if they won or lost the raffle.

Similar to last few years, the games included Roulette, Craps, and Blackjack. Kalman Dong (‘22) said, “Yeah I enjoyed the Casino Night and I was playing Blackjack. I ended up winning two prizes while I was working with my friends. I loved it.”

Meanwhile, people crowded around the Craps table even if they did not know the rules. Yet they still learned and actively participated with instructions from the croupiers, while enjoying the Jameson-made boba.

The Casino Night wrapped up with the announcements of the winners by picking raffle tickets. Students from different schools and different classes received prizes such as In-N-Out and Amazon gift cards.

Kalman said, “I’ll probably go out with several friends and use the In-N-Out gift card, but I don’t know yet, we’ll see. I just felt very lucky to win it because I didn’t have many raffle tickets.”

The clean up began right after people left Hooper. Jameson prefects, Student Government members, as well as volunteers from Jameson dorm stayed to help taking down the decorations and putting furnitures back to Jameson and Alamo dorms. Only thirty minutes after the Casino Night ended, Hooper, hooper’s kitchen, and the restroom were cleaned up as if Casino Night never happened. Dean Farrell and several other students volunteered to take the leftover food with them to share with their family and neighbors just so there can be less wastes of food.

Charlie hopes that the Student Government as well as Jameson prefects can do a better job next year on the publicity. He said, “Due to the weather we didn’t get chance to put up posters, and we didn’t have chances to hold class meetings, so it was a bit hard to let everyone know it and encourage them to participate.”

At the same time, Jordan Fang (‘19) hopes to see more variety of food next year. “I know it’s Casino Night and there’s that whole Casino vibe going on, but I think it would help if we can have more types of food.” Moreover, Jordan believes that the raffle at the end was “a bit odd,” as he said, “I understand it’s not the nature of a casino, but like we are not an actual casino. So the winner repeatedly won lots of prizes, but I think it would be better if they can maximize the number of people who receives the prize, just to make it more fun.”

Since the Casino Night is the only event in the school that requires people to dress up besides Homecoming and Prom, what people should wear became an issue among the student body as some of the students were unwilling to dress up just to “go down to Hooper to play cards.” However, Mr. Rosenfeld, who strongly supports dressing up formally, emphasized that, “It is important to keep the standards up. There is the Webb dress code, how you dress up really affects how you behave. So we used the same ideology to make people have that classy feeling and make the tone of the Casino Night formal and respectful.”

Compared to other events at Webb such as holiday parties, Mr. Rosenfeld believes that how people dress up for other events should not affect the “dress code” of Casino Night.

However, with all voices aside, the majority of the student loved Casino Night and say that they had lots of fun. All the faculty, Student Government members, and the entire student body are already anticipating the upcoming Casino Night.

Gallery | 18 Photos

Stephen Li ('21)

Gerry Song (’22), Chris Chung (’22), and Bradyn Wishek (’22) gather around the table and discuss the rules explained by the dealer.