The room buzzed with the sounds of 24 students asking each other questions regarding their personal interests. Pre-formatted questions laid spread across the square of tables in the Legacy Multipurpose Room for those participating in campus’s first-ever “speed friending” event put on by the E.P.I.C. Peer Mentors organization. Similar to speed dating, students sat across from one another and had five minutes to figure out if they wanted to be friends.

Jorrey Martin, supervisor and graduate student, said this organization saw a problem with retention on campus.

“We really wanted put on an event to bring everyone together [and get students to] meet new people and come to an activity,” Martin said. “We wanted [students to have] an opportunity to get out of their dorms and socialize.”

Alexis Osborne, E.P.I.C. member and nursing junior, said she wanted to give students a fun way to meet new people and potentially make friends.

“You want to meet new people [since it’s the start of a new semester] and there are new students coming in too,” Osborne said. “We were thinking about what we event we would want to go to on campus.”

Osborne said this organization began in the fall 2019 semester.

“I’m definitely [excited about] the turnout because we never know how many people are going to come and who hears about it, so that is definitely really cool,” she said. “We are relatively new since this is our first year on campus. Getting the publicity and getting people to come to our events is amazing.”

Max Suelzer, finance junior, sat in one of the 48 chairs available to students interested in meeting new people.

“I think the appeal is to meet new people,” Suelzer said. “[It can be hard] to make new friends on campus, so I saw this event was [happening] and I decided to swing by.”

The E.P.I.C. Peer Mentors organization is hosting an event called “Sugar and Spice, Organizations are Nice” in the Legacy Multipurpose Room at 7 p.m. for students to find organizations on campus they can be involved in.