For college students on a budget, Valentine’s Day can be a difficult holiday. The pressure to provide a significant other with a memorable romantic experience has the potential to turn a day intended for fun into a day full of stress and worry.
A number of free events this weekend can help to ease that pressure.
The University Activities Board is hosting Battle of the Power PairsSaturday at 9 p.m. in the International Center. Pairs — which can be romantic couples, best friends or roommates — compete against other pairs in a battle of who knows their partner better. First place winners will each receive a Kindle Fire, second place winners get $75 in Spartan Cash and third place winners get $50 for the Spartan Spirit Shop.
Campus Center Cinemas will be showing three romantic movies all weekend, including the classic Valentine’s Day flick “The Notebook.” Also being shown are “Crazy, Stupid, Love.,”also featuring Ryan Gosling, and “The Theory of Everything,” a romantic drama about Stephen Hawking, played by Eddie Redmayne, falling for Jane Wilde and dealing with the progression of his Lou Gehrig’s disease.
The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum is offering a Chinese-language tour of the Future Returns: Contemporary Art from China exhibit at 11 a.m. At 2 p.m.there will also be a Collection Show and Tell, led by Director of Education Michelle Word, discussing “American Girl in Italy” by photographer Ruth Orkin.
Valentine’s Day also offers couples the chance to make an impact – join MSU Students For Choice in their V-Day March starting at noonfrom the rock on Farm Lane to the Kellogg Hotel and Conference Center to support the One Billion Rising Campaign. V-Day and One Billion Rising are global movements aimed to end violence against women. For Cayley Winters, co-president of Students for Choice and sophomore premedical student, having V-Day on Valentine’s Day makes perfect sense.
“Even on a day that’s supposed to be symbolic in the form of love and romance, (Valentine’s Day) tries to drive sexually and domestically abused women into the shadows. And so having the movement that day is bringing cases of rape, incest, violence, genital mutilation, etc. into the light and is an attempt to put an end to it,” Winters said.
