About 25 students from different registered student organizations crowded together Tuesday to learn the history behind each other’s names and become lost at sea in the South Pacific.

Organization members participated in an icebreaker and a team builder during the Student Organization Cabinet’s first meeting of the semester.

Kyle Cavanaugh, a junior finance major and a member of the Student Investment Society, said he did not think the icebreaker and team builder would be beneficial in his organization because he did not think it applied to how they ran meetings, but he enjoyed meeting a diverse group of people.

“It was great to see such a diverse census of our school’s population,” Cavanaugh said. “Most of the time members of the same organization will have the same interests and objectives so it was interesting to see other people’s views.”

The icebreaker was titled “Where did you get that name?” and the participants would vote on who had the best story of how they were named.

Kaci Abolt, a junior communication studies major and the student vice president for student affairs, said the icebreaker is an effective way for organizations to learn names, and it made people more comfortable with talking with each other because everyone has an interesting story to share.

“This can be done in a group of any size whether it is a group of five or 300,” Abolt said.

After a burst of laughter about the origin of his name, all but three hands shot up to vote for Johnson Glascock, a junior kinesiology and sports studies major.

“My dad really wanted a girl for his first kid, so he was very upset and endlessly searched the family tree to discover the worst name he could possibly find to torture my soul in high school; and he came up with Johnson Glascock-so I have two dicks in my name,” Glascock said.

During the team builder, the organization members were also presented with a scenario where they were lost at sea and had to rank the importance of the 15 items they had.

Abolt said she wanted to steer away from the “stuffy meeting atmosphere” and thought it would be beneficial to provide organization members with examples they could bring back to their registered student organizations.

The Student Organization Cabinet will also begin awarding the Registered Student Organization of the Month, and applications will be available in the Student Activities Center, Abolt said.

The winning organization will be featured in the Student Life Office’s newsletter titled “Leader of the Pack.”

Rachel Rodgers can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].