Sarah Shelton – Features Editor
Program Council’s (ProCon) weekly PB&J event is back.
For years, ProCon has been holding an event in the Engleman Rotunda every Thursday where they have a table full of plates, different loaves of bread, peanut butter, jelly, Nutella and fluff for students to come and make a sandwich. During COVID-19, however, they were not able to do this.
ProCon still wanted to keep their student-loved event going—so they started handing out Uncrustables, a frozen sealed sandwich, in the Academic quad to follow guidelines.
“We still have to do Uncrustables because pre-COVID we would have the students make their own sandwiches, we would lay the bread first, then the peanut butters, jellies, and fluff and have them scoop it out themselves, but since COVID happened we can’t do that still,” said weekend programmer Matt Berry, a senior.
Berry is the longest-running programmer at ProCon. He said this event predates him and he knew it was something they had to continue to do.
“That’s been our staple event we’ve always had,” Berry said. “That’s been our traditional one that students always come to, so we knew we had to keep that. That’s the one most people know us for.”
It may be different now, but Berry still has hope once it is safe to do so, ProCon could go back to the old way.
“I think people preferred the old way,” Berry said. “Because some of them didn’t always do peanut butter and jelly, they would do strawberry jam, some did marshmallow fluff, so there are combinations we can’t get with the Uncrustables.”
Nighttime Programmers, Kimberly Roig and Ramsley Exantus, who were helping with the event, said they only have the peanut butter and jelly Uncrustables available, but they will bring it up at the next ProCon meeting to consider including other flavor options.
“We have snacks,” Roig said. “Right now we have goldfish, Rice Krispies, combos, obviously the Uncrustables, pop tarts, cookies. I think last week it was also granola bars and chips.”
Due to scheduling conflicts, all programmers are currently coming together to keep their events running. This particular PB&J event, held on Sept. 16, was run by nighttime and weekend programmers.
“We have our own committees, but we do help each other out,” Roig said. “The daytime programmers set up and we stayed to hand everything out.” Exantus said he enjoys doing events with ProCon and helping other committees, such as the daytime programmers, when needed.
“I feel like the thing about ProCon is that we have a really good sense of commodity when it comes to helping each other out,” Exantus said. “Nighttime, daytime, weekend programming, we all come together and try to make the best for everybody on campus, even during COVID.”
Exantus and weekend programmer Naomi Lorde said the PB&J event is Procon’s signature event, but not the biggest one.
“We have a lot of events honestly, not just this one,” Lorde said. “Honestly, I think our biggest event this month is definitely our pizza tour of New Haven, and in two weeks we are having a Six Flags trip for weekends, so that’s one of our biggest events, I would say.”
Roig said the majority of their events have been successful so far. They run out of everything before 1 p.m., but get a better turnout when the weather is nice.
“I think we were slowed a little because of the rain,” Roig said. “But I know last week was very successful.”
