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Paint the Town Red is one of the largest anticipated community events in Pittsburg, held annually for 12 years. Red color is everywhere the week of Paint the Town Red for the annual community celebration leading up to the first home Gorilla football game of the season.
Paint the Town Red is organized by the Pittsburg area Chamber of Commerce and involves many participants and sponsors from local businesses and companies throughout Pittsburg to show support PSU. This year’s theme was “Gus get down.”
Dani Gosh, special event director for Pittsburg Area Chamber of Commerce, said this event brings excitement and joy for the community to decorate around town and appreciation for the Gorillas and community.
“The community is really into it,” Gosh said. “The business community gets really into it for just kind of supporting students in college and Gorillas in football. … I help in organize all of this, so we had a number from the community in the committee and a planning committee from Pitt State that kind of helps steer everything in the right direction, but I’m kind of the main contact for everything.”
Community businesses that participate in the decorating contest year after year are Watco Companies, Pitsco Education, Miller’s Professional Imaging, Silvercreek Medical Reimbursements, Arvest Bank, BMO Harris Bank, and Audacious Boutique.
Arvest Bank has been part of the Pittsburg Community for five years and each year they participated in Paint the Town Red.
“We just feel it’s really important to back our local school,” said Lacie Cottrell, Arvest Bank Branch Sales Manager. “It’s a big university and a great university and most of us that work here actually went to school there, so we all bleed blue for Arvest and bleed red and gold for Pitt State. It’s a lot of fun to do and it shows our local support and we just hope that others from (the) community continue doing this and grow this event even more every year.”
Students organizations and offices on campus also participated in decorating for the Paint the Town Red, as Jon Bartlow, director of the Wilkinson Alumni Center, said.
“We always open it up to student organizations as well as offices on campus and so every year we have both of those groups who participate, and this morning we actually had three judges who are just various folks who in other places around the community and so they came onto campus and went around to each of the various locations for student organizations and offices and did their scoring sheets and tallied up who are the winners,” Bartlow said.
Many campus offices and student organizations participated this year, such as the Student Government Association (SGA), who used primarily handmade items as their décor.
“We handmade a disco ball hanging above the desk in the office, which is my favorite handmade decoration we made,” said Cassandra Ngo, senior in political science and SGA community affairs director. “It was a really team effort. We had a limited budget, but we made it work and it was really fun.”
Paint the Town Red week is a joint effort between the Wilkinson Alumni Center and the Chamber of Commerce by sending information to the various offices and campus students organizations as well as the community to make all are aware of what is going on.
“We always appreciate the offices and student organizations on campus getting involved, and certainly the community and a lot of the businesses in town, it’s just kind of a great way for everyone to show their spirit and excitement about not only the beginning of the football season for this year but also for the beginning of the new school year here at Pitt State,” Bartlow said.
