Thousands of curious students gathered around the Bell Tower Thursday night to see the premier Temple Made Live event which had been mysteriously promoted for weeks.
Students were treated to free food and danced for nearly three hours inside a large crowd that began on the steps of the Bell Tower and extended down Polett Walk reaching beyond North 13th Street. Students also crowded the grass on Beury Beach.
Before the event began at 7:00 p.m., students and faculty began to gather early around the Bell Tower and speculation grew of a possible celebrity appearance.
Names of famous people ranging from singer Justin Beiber to politician Herman Cain were talked of as possibly celebrity appearances. Temple even took to Twitter to dispel rumors that Aaron Carter would show up for the event.
No word was given by the university as to the details of the event before hand, simply advertising that students “may never see Paley Library in the same light again.”
“I heard them saying it was gonna be history, and who wouldn’t want to be around for history?” Kat Fromuth, a junior English major, said.
“I just heard it was at the Bell Tower, there’s gonna be free food and free music, and I love free food and free music,” Nichelle Brunner, a freshman journalism major, said before the event.
Brunner’s friend Iyonna Jackson, a freshman business major, had a more specific idea of the what the events festivities would be.
“Oh my god I thought Meek Mill was going to be here, and I didn’t know what could possibly go on!” Jackson exclaimed, adding: “I was so excited to be here, Temple is the place to be.”
However, the most common answer students gave when asked what they thought was going to happen was simply: “I have no idea.”
As students gathered for free food mingled with friends, music started playing from speakers placed around the bell towers and cameras suspended from cranes were used to film the crowd.
Two DJs performed for the event, DJ Sylo a Temple student, opened up the live performance around 7:30 p.m. followed by DJ Royale, a Temple graduate. Both performed together on stage with members of various Temple student organizations.
At 8 p.m. a light show protecting Temple Ts and the cherry and white colors was projected onto the Bell Tower.
Soon after, the walls of Paley library were light up with a picture slideshow of students and faculty clad in cherry and white face paint along with videos of the football team and students at work in the classroom. At various times the words “self made, Philly made, Temple made,” were projected on the side of the library.
The crowd of students, which Temple Police estimated to reach around 3,000, began to disperse as the night wore on. The last of the students left after the two DJs left the stage at 10 p.m.
John Moritz can be reached at john.moritz@temple.edu or on Twitter @JCMoritzTU.
For a complete slideshow from the event, click here.
Be the first to comment