FILE PHOTO/Arizona Daily Wildcat Students set up a Spring Fling booth on the Mall on April 10, 1999, the last year that Spring Fling was held on campus.

Annual carnival will never return to Mall

For the first 26 years of its existence, Spring Fling took place on the UA Mall.

But for the last three years it has been held at Rillito Downs - and according to Spring Fling coordinators, that's where it's going to stay.

Tricia Domschke, public relations director for Spring Fling, said the primary reason why the carnival will never return to the Mall is because it would exclude people with disabilities from the event.

Domschke, a communication junior, said that if Spring Fling were on the Mall, fences that are used to contain Spring Fling would make it inaccessible to people in wheelchairs.

Collette Gallegos, an undeclared freshman from Tucson, remembers when Spring Fling was on the Mall and wishes the event hadn't been relocated.

"I hate that. It was so much more fun on the Mall. It's so dusty at the Rillito," she said.

Domschke said the move to Rillito Downs, on the corner of North First Avenue and East River Road, is also due to a lack of space on the Mall.

With over 30 rides and 3,000 students involved, more space is needed for the event.

The carnival, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, needs seven acres now compared to the two acres it took up when it first began.

Spring Fling, the largest student-run carnival in the nation, hosted 28,000 attendees last year and about 120 student clubs and organizations help to put it on. It raised $80,000 for student clubs and organizations.

The event was first moved off campus in 2000 when construction of the Integrated Learning Center began.

Originally, Spring Fling planners had hoped the carnival would return to the UA Mall after the ILC was completed.

"There's not as much room on the Mall as we used to have," Domschke said.

Although transportation is offered to students in hourly shuttles from UA to Rillito Downs, Dana Marion, a sophomore majoring in elementary education, said getting there for some students is still inconvenient.

"It's annoying," Marion said. "Who wants to stand in line for a shuttle to go over there and come back?"

Domschke said students should focus on the positives.

"Rillito Downs is a bigger venue and parking is easier," she said. "There are a lot of benefits."

Having the event at Rillito Downs, Domschke said, would avoid the exclusion of people in wheelchairs and allows for members of the Tucson community in general to be involved, which has been a goal for Spring Fling.

Though Spring Fling has always been an event open to the public, and is the seventh largest event in Tucson, the non-student community may have thought Spring Fling was only for students, Domschke said.

"We want the whole (Tucson) community to be involved," Domschke said. "Not for people to see UA as its own entity."