Students gather for a St. Patricks themed performance. **Photo by Amy Suh**

Last week, The Owl hosted another successful edition of its quarterly event, “Coffee House.” This time, landing just a few days before St. Patrick’s Day, the event was retitled “Irish Coffee(house).” Taking place in the Williman Room of Benson Memorial Center, the event was decorated with string lights and offered free pizza, drinks and Lucky Charms to all students in attendance. A raffle was also in place where students could write their names and a synonym for “luck” for a free chance to win a teddy bear and a bag of Sour Patch Kids. As a lifelong Sour Patch consumer and enthusiast—I used to regularly eat the now-discontinued Sour Patch Kids cereal—I couldn’t resist taking my chance, yet I will admit I struggled initially to come up with my synonym. What seemed to be a rather easy task—especially for a journalist—actually stumped me a bit after a friend of mine stole the obvious choice in “fortune.” After refusing to admit defeat in resorting to a Google search, I reluctantly settled on “good tidings” and found my seat.

M.J. Salanga ’25 kicked off the show with two songs as the crowd settled in. Having been a recurring performer at the event, Salanga announced that this would be her final stint as she is on course to graduate this quarter. With that in mind, she went a nostalgic route and played Ren’s “Blind Eyed,” which she introduced as one of the first songs she ever learned to play on guitar. Next, she brought in Andrew Bautista ’26 to harmonize over an original song that they had prepared for Barkada’s upcoming Filipino Culture Night. Both songs were brilliant and warmed the audience up for the following acts: poetry readings by students Júlia von Gersdorff and Alex Coleman and an acapella performance by the on-campus group Supertonic. All three performances shined, and soon enough there weren’t enough available chairs for the ever-growing audience.

The rest of the show followed suit, with readings from other student poets and fiction writers Nate Hirschtick and Daniel Grau. Poet Isabelle Fejes even touched on some pop culture with poems about Jojo Siwa’s viral statements about creating “gay pop” music. A performance by popular on-campus band One Million Beers went swimmingly, despite only two of five members being able to attend—prompting MOR Katy Wolff to wittily announce them as “400,000” beers. Their acoustic renditions of Peach Pit’s “Hot Knifer” and an original tune, “The Dancer,” prompted loud cheers from the audience, and soon it was time for the final act.

Those who attended the event could pick up copies of The Owl’s literary journal.

Funny enough, I happened to be one third of said act. Maddie Vitanza, Editor in Chief of The Owl and one of my first friends in college, had reached out to me a few months prior to have my band, Solace, play the event. Unfortunately, similar to our friends in 400,000 Beers, only three of our seven members could attend, so we had to make due with what we had. Luckily, we happened to plan the same song layout as the other acts, debuting one original titled “Out on a Whim,” and bringing it all home with Neil Young’s classic “Harvest Moon.” This time, I tried out some acoustic guitar, drummer Adi Ranganathan sat atop a cajon, and fellow guitarist Nate Kwak stayed ripping beautiful electric melodies on top of it all. I was quite proud of our performance, and I was excited to hear a happy audience cheering us on. Feeling the stars beginning to align, I hopefully stood back afterwards and listened for the raffle results. “Tyler!” Maddie exclaimed into the microphone, much to my dismay. Watching Tyler retrieve his fresh pack of sour bliss, I knew there would be no “good tidings” for me after all.