Last Thursday night, students gathered for an unusual purpose — sharing stories.

The Cave Café, otherwise known as “that stage in the corner of the Fish House,” hosted its first-ever Story Slam. The event offered students an open mic for sharing their stories, with only three rules: first, stories had to be true, and as remembered by the storyteller; second, no notes were allowed on stage; and third, each storyteller was given a maximum of five minutes to tell their story.

Senior Matthew Schepers is one of the students who organize and run Cave Café events each Thursday night. Following the first open-mic event of the semester, he felt the need for a different kind of event in which more students might want to participate.

He described open-mics as being “usually punctuated by just long stretches of nothing,” due to a lack of students interested in performing music. This sort of dead-space during September’s “In Memory of Shrek: 2001-2016” open-mic was the inspiration for the Story Slam. During a seemingly ill-fated music-drought, some students took to the stage to share stories of their favorite times spent with the fictional character Shrek. Silly as it may sound, the stories told that night, which Schepers recalled as “real” and “personal,” led him and the rest of the Cave Café staff to dedicate an entire event to sharing stories. The goal was to emphasize the fundamental humanity inherent in the exchange of stories and to recognize this as a community-benefitting practice for Calvin. Schepers phrased his approach to the Story Slam as “every human is interesting.”

Although the event only lasted an hour, an array of tales were told. The listeners, some of whom were storytellers as well, heard of the primeval appeal of firearms, the pain of heartbreak on New Year’s Eve, the joy of a long-awaited vanilla milkshake, the process of learning patience and the beauty of irresponsible road trips.

Junior students Jenna Van Donselaar and Cotter Koopman and sophomore student Ale Crevier were a few of the evening’s storytellers. Van Donselaar observed, “People were vulnerable.” Koopman believed the students “felt more comfortable than [they normally do] at open mics.” Crevier appreciated how the storytellers made “their serious stories normalities.” Schepers, too, felt the event was a success, praising the stories told as “fascinating,” “funny” and “kind of empathizing,” and also recognized the presence of some “natural storytellers” on campus.

The Cave Café plans to host another Story Slam in the spring. The hope is that more students will feel compelled to recognize the significance of their own stories by sharing them and rejoice in the significance of others’ stories by listening.