Spanning two floors and three rooms, 223 student organizations lined the halls and rooms of the Kirkhof Center for Grand Valley State University’s Campus Life Night 2.0 on Jan. 15.

While CLN 2.0 didn’t have room for all 400+ student organizations, it still gave many student organizations the opportunity to showcase their groups to hundreds of interested students.

Thirty-nine organizations and tables of free food were set up in Crave while WCKS Whale student radio provided entertainment by playing music that was heard throughout the building.

GVSU’s co-ed a cappella group, Euphoria, put on a show in the Grand River Room upstairs with 122 other organizations listening. The Pere Marquette Room was filled with 61 clubs.

Josh Lee,the graduate assistant for student organization development in the Office of Student Life, helped organize CLN 2.0 this year. It is strategically placed in the winter semester to benefit student organizations by helping them recruit new members, and to benefit students who couldn’t make it to the first event in the fall.

“We accept new student organizations year round, so the ones who come in after (the first) Campus Life Night don’t have the opportunity to do anything until the year after,” he said. “We think it’s a good opportunity for those organizations that didn’t get to participate in the first one.”

Stitchcraft, a sewing club, was grateful for the opportunity to participate in another Campus Life Night. They were only made an official club last January and being at CLN helps them expand their club.

Carson Garety, a member of the stitchcraft club, was happy about being at the event.

“We started off pretty small and we’ve stayed fairly small,” Garety said. “We’ve definitely gotten bigger because of Campus Life Night.”

Lee said that GVSU is now nearing 500 student organizations. He also said although it would be nice to have them all at the event, it isn’t beneficial for the organizations or the students for the space to be overcrowded and hard to navigate.

Even though the concepts are the same, Campus Life Night 2.0 differs slightly from the fall version of CLN.

“It’s only student organizations, so it’s much more centered on what those organizations are and what they do,” Lee said. “Campus Life Night in the fall is almost more like getting in tune with Grand Valley, Allendale and the West Michigan area, (so) its just as much an intro to college for a lot of the first year students as it is an intro to the organizations.”

The GVSU beekeeping club was also happy to be at Campus Life Night to promote their club around campus.

Megan Dimeco, treasurer of the beekeeping club, said the club was official in 2012, but they just started becoming established in the community last year.

“We are really just trying to focus on getting students and the community more educated about honeybee health and how important they are,” Dimeco said.

The other big difference between CLN in the fall and last Friday’s event was the live entertainment from GVSU’s own clubs. This gave them a chance to show people what they do and what prospective students can look forward to from the groups. Both Whale Radio downstairs and Euphoria upstairs had a large showing of people.

“Campus Life Night 2.0 is a lot more narrow of a focus,” Lee said. “It’s only about student organizations and it asks Grand Valley students ‘how can you make the most of your college experience?’”