justArts: Can you tell me about the theme for Fall Fest? 

Sandra Luo: [It’s] board games. And by that I mean—we wanted to base it off of [a well-known board game], but that was the idea behind it. We realized that the [specific board game] was copyrighted, that would be copyright infringement, and we could get in a ton of trouble. We changed it [the theme] to board games in general just kind of as a callback to childhood—to kind of go along that pathway.

JA: How does the theme fit into the Fall Fest’s festivities?

SL: My mentality behind that was—I really wanted to create something that would remind people of things that they watched, things that they experienced when they were kids. So you know, growing up, I watched a ton of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?. To this day, I still watch a lot of Jeopardy, so I wanted to look for some sort of game show themed event. 

I looked at a ton of vendors to see what sort of options they had, what was the price range and what would be something fun and exciting that would encourage people to come. And that’s how we kind of ended up with ThinkFast. It’s a very fast-paced environment. They give away $200 in cash. ... With Dave Coulier, it was kind of just the full process of looking at what are the options for people to come do stand-up, in terms of, again, price-range, what type of comedian would best serve Brandeis’ audience, and Dave Colier was actually one of the names that popped up. ... So I thought that would be really fun, and I thought that, you know, being that most of the students currently at Brandeis were born in the mid-90s, that’s something that, you know—we watch reruns of Full House—that’s something that a lot of people could kind of connect with. 

JA: What got you interested in Fall Fest? 

SL: I’m from California, so my parents don’t really get a chance to come out here, especially for a weekend trip where they have to fly all the way across the country. And my little brother is at home, so it’s really hard for them to come here. So I wanted, as a freshman, to sort of get involved with parent’s weekend—Fall Fest—in a way, you know, where I could help other people enjoy the time they spend with their parents. So I started volunteering, and then I volunteered for two years, and I ended up really, really enjoying being a volunteer, and so I applied to be a coordinator last year—that was my first year. And I wanted a big role, I wanted something where, you know, I could actually make a huge impact on peoples’ experiences. And that’s kind of, you know, how I got started. 

JA: How did you get Dave Coulier? 

SL: It was surprisingly simple and pretty straightforward. So, to be completely honest, he wasn’t my first pick. We checked with another artist who was actually unavailable at that time. And, you know, like I said, his name popped up on the options that the agent suggested. And so we thought about, you know, he makes sense. He’s, you know, a pretty well-known name, especially if you associate with Full House. And I watched some of his stand up, and it’s really funny. He does a lot of, you know, pretty clean but, you know, funny humor, which I thought would be really appropriate for the crowd, for parents, for students alike. 

JA: If someone were going to go to one event which one would you suggest? 

SL: I think what would be really cool is to go see Dave Coulier. We’re promoting it a lot. The idea is that we do want a lot of people to go to it, and hopefully, if we have, you know, two years of really solid attendance from the Brandeis community, we can probably leverage that to get, you know, the comedians into a better location. Because as much as I love—and everyone else in the world—loves Shapiro Gym, it’s not necessarily the best place to have a comedian do stand-up. It’s, you know, not the right venue for something that should be, you know, a little bit nicer. Also, considering that this is the second year that we’ve had a comedian come to Brandeis, let’s continue this tradition of a really great attendance.