UWM Panthers After Dark: Dorm Spa Night Keeps Students on Campus

As every student knows, you can’t go home for winter break without clearing that one last hurdle: Finals. Finals can bring major stress and frustration to students. At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the residence life coordinators have just the thing to help their students combat their ever-rising stress levels: A spa in the dorms.

On Dec. 4, the Panthers After Dark program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee hosted a “Spa Night” to help students cope with their stress and help put their minds at ease. Panthers After Dark is a program that provides alternative events so students don’t have to venture out and go off campus late at night looking for something to do.

To help keep people from venturing off campus late at night, all Panther After Dark programs are held in any of the three residence halls at UWM. The Spa Night was held in the third floor Channel Lounge of the Sandburg Residence Hall and was set to start at 9:27 p.m.. However, even having arrived at the event a half hour early, the lines for the different activities at Spa Night were already incredibly long, snaking around the entire Channel Lounge.

There were four stations scattered throughout the room, each hosting a different activity. The choices for activities included five-minute professional massages, a “Do it yourself” manicure and pedicure station, a facemask station, and a station where the students were able to create their own sugar scrub. As for refreshments, there was a bin of ice-cold juices for anyone who wanted one.

“We wanted to plan an event to help the students cope with the stress of finals,” explained Jessica Ward, a Residence Life Coordinator at the Riverview Residence Hall. She is a part of Panthers After Dark. She explained that the program called in professional massage therapists to make the event sound more appealing and to help get more students to attend.

Ward couldn’t be any more right about the massage therapists attracting more students. The line for the massages, which snaked all throughout the lounge as well as out the door, had a total wait time of two hours. The sugar scrub station came in second place for length of time spent in line with a 30-minute wait.

Jaylyn Fisher, a sophomore living in the Sandburg Residence Hall, attended the event.

“I came primarily for the sugar scrub and the massage. My roommate and I are really stressed about finals so we thought this might help,” she said.

On the same note, Devin Bauer, a freshman living in the Sandburg Residence hall, also came because of stress from finals.

“I just wanted to de-stress and get a free massage. I only came for the massage,” he said.