Valerie Osier | Staff Editor
It’s no secret, college students need money. Books, tuition and living expenses tend to create holes in their pockets.
That’s one of the reasons the College Council of Riverside held its third annual “Amazing College Race”, where teams competed to win scholarship money on Feb. 9.
Based on the popular television show “The Amazing Race”, students from the four colleges in Riverside (Riverside City College, La Sierra University, Cal Baptist University and UC Riverside) competed in teams of three in a downtown-based scavenger hunt.
The Riverside Downtown Partnership and the College Council of Riverside organized the race. Their goal was to help students connect with the downtown area and discover what Downtown Riverside has to offer college students.
“(We wanted) to help students collaborate with each other from the different campuses so that we can really realize the full potential of our 60,000 students in Riverside,” said Dawson Young, a senior at CBU and President of the council
A total of 54 teams competed with $4,200 in scholarships being offered to six teams.
The winning team of Carlos Lopez Jr., Cesar Solis and Edgar Cobian, also known as “The Three Amigos”, were cross-country runners from UCR.
“It’s a great experience too for all the colleges to come together at once- there’s no other time this really happens,” said Solis.
The race took teams to different businesses and areas in riverside and for the highest amount of points-up Mt. Rubidoux.
“I think it’s a good way for them to promote people to come to downtown,” said Lopez.
Teams of three had to solve clues that led to different locations around the Downtown Riverside area.
Each clue has a different point value and bonus points are offered if the students do the activities at the locations.
The team that finished with the most points won the event.
“It’s great to engage the youth from the four higher education campuses and connect them to the downtown corridor,” said Assistant to the Mayor, Josephine Erickson. “Not only for them to realize the gems of restaurants, businesses and activities there are to do, but also to network with one another.”
One of the goals of this event was to give students a lifetime connection to Riverside.
“We want to celebrate (that we are) a college town, the second thing is we want students to connect with Riverside in a fun way today,” said Mayor Rusty Bailey.
“We value the students here. We want (students) to think about Riverside in terms of employment, in terms of starting (their) own business here and in terms of raising (their) own families here someday. That is my hope and that’s why we are doing this.”
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