UPC collaborates with TruCha boba for Destress Fest - The ...

Grace Lukens, Staff Writer–

A drab day on A-Quad was brightened for many students by a surprise at the Slayter Flagpole– free boba. 

Outside of Slayter, students gathered to grab one of the delicious drinks, bright, bubbly music setting the tone behind cheerful conversations. This welcome surprise was Bubble Day, an event in the Destress Fest series, a recurring initiative that hosts events to promote student wellness on campus.

“My friend told me that there was free boba,” said Catherine Kim ‘27, “and I knew I had to stop by.” 

Kim said that she feels Denison cares a lot about their students’ wellness. “They do all these events that help us to destress and they really care about students– there’s a lot of unique events at Dension that you wouldn’t really find elsewhere at a bigger school.”

Truc Hoang ‘26, the co-founder of TruCha, was one of the students handing out boba. “Bubble Day is actually a recurring event hosted by UPC…” she said. “This year we had a chance to collaborate with them, they reached out to us with the idea and we just worked together from there!”

Hoang felt that along with Bubble Day’s aim to support campus wellness, the event also was able to foster a sense of community among the students. TruCha is a perfect organization to help run these events, Hoang said, because “we care about student wellness in every way that we operate. From the very beginning, the purpose of TruCha was to bring a sense of Asian community. We want to add something to our community, and our role [in this event] was to be able to give all students a sweet addition to their day.”

Bubble Day, along with the rest of the Destress Fest Series events, is hosted by the University Programming Council, known as UPC. UPC is a student-run organization that is responsible for hosting events and activities for the student body, and the organization regularly collaborates with other organizations around campus. Keesha Joseph ‘26, the Executive Director of UPC, described the organization as “the main place on campus that keeps the traditional events here on campus– like Denison Day and Aestivalia. We also provide the smaller events…like our Slayter Late Night series.”

Thus, UPC is an integral part of campus life, from the largest events to the day to day activities that you can just stumble upon, like Bubble Day. 

Joseph also agreed with the community building power of these wellness initiatives. “[UPC] tries to do our best to represent the university, and we also really want student input, to get students to pitch in with their own ideas…and at the end of the day, because we are students, we know what we want.” By putting the organization of these events in the hands of student leaders, “we can listen to our own voices.”

Joseph credited Yen Nguyen ‘26 with the creation of Bubble Day.

“She just had the idea to do something for the students in terms of stress relief during finals season. It started with Bubble Day, and she’s also responsible for some of our events coming up in December as well.”

Overall, Bubble Day was a way to “help students ease off the stress and all the work that they have to do during finals,” a quick pick-me-up in the middle of the week.

The event also proved useful for both TruCha and UPC. TruCha was able to use the event to promote an expansion: as of Nov. 14th, the student business has expanded their offerings to add a new day of operation (Thursday)  alongside their normal days of operation on Tuesday and Friday. They hope to continue to offer new menu items and hours. Hoang also commented that TruCha hopes to work with UPC again on Bubble Day and other events, a testament to the community building that is already underway as a result of the event. UPC hopes to use this event to promote their annual Winterfest in early December.