The Southern Miss Activities Council (SMAC) recently hosted a virtual reality event to give students an opportunity to play games and have fun in a virtual reality world.
The activity included two simulator chairs with attached car seats and wheels and a television for students to gauge their driving efforts and those of their competitors.

For the virtual reality event, SMAC Advisor April Broome set out to target a different population of students for the event. She strategically timed the activity to take place during the middle of the day, hoping to attract students at different times.

“This event was to try to capture different populations on campus,” she said. “I know we have a really thriving eSports community. So, our goal was to piggyback on that and see if we can have some other students that also want to do events.”

SMAC partnered with a reputable company, Virtual Reality Simulator, to bring the fun and challenging event to campus.

“We just knew that it was going to be a driving simulator and that people may not know what a VR simulator was,” Broome added. “So, when we did the graphics, we made sure to put a wheel like someone was driving so that they would understand it.”

SMAC’s next event will be on March 22 when the organization hosts a movie, Big Hero Six. On April 3, the group plans to put on a game show in the theater. On April 10, their final movie showing will be the new Transformers movie. And on April 19, SMAC will wrap up the semester with a Crawfish fest and its annual Late Night Meal.

SMAC encourages students to get involved and has a process for joining its organization. That process begins each spring with a Membership Drive that includes group and individual interviews.

“We’ll do interviews the week after spring break the 18th through the 22nd for those that have applied,” Broome said. “Then from there, by the end of March, we hope to know who our new members are.”

SMAC will start incorporating the members into events this semester to prepare them for the next semester.

If you would like to get a feel for what SMAC does and gain experience on how to plan events, you can check out SMAC programs that are offered for bigger events each semester. Be sure to follow SMAC on Facebook and Instagram for more details on the membership drive or events.