HOUGHTON – The organizers of Michigan Technological University’s annual Spring Fling create plans for both indoors and outdoors.

Until Tuesday, it looked like the former. But organizers looked at the weather forecast, rolled the dice and moved it back to its traditional home on the main campus. They reaped the benefits Friday, as students wandered back and forth across campus for excitement and information about campus organizations.

Seventy-five groups had booths Friday, offering everything from raffling off hammocks to giving away cotton to bring people in.

It’s a great way for the students to have fun before the stress of finals comes,” said Magann Dykema, special events committee chair for the Memorial Union Board, which organizes Spring Fling.

People could also take in a motorcycle stunt show by the Memorial Union Building. Thanks to balloon artist Ryan Freeman, some of the students wandering the main walk also had elaborate space aliens on their head, or carried giant octopi with two of their friends.

But it’s mostly about connecting students with a variety of activities.

“It’s really great publicity for student orgs,” said Jessie Stapleton, director of student activities at Tech. “If a student org has a booth, hopefully they can recruit new members.”

Alpha Society, an invitation-only honor society for freshman and sophomore engineering students, used the day as an opportunity to familiarize students with it who might later be invited. Students could guess how many rubber bands it would take to explode a watermelon, as seen in a recent viral Buzzfeed video.

This is the first Spring Fling for the club, which is looking to build on its recent 900 percent increase to about 40 members, said president Rose Turner.

“We’re at kind of an inconvenient location on the end, but we still get people stopping through,” she said. “I think the candy helps.”

Live animals didn’t hurt either. The MTU Dance Team drew people in with an orange tabby named Ed, renamed Garfield for the day in honor of its cartoon theme.

“This little girl was 5 or 6 and he gave her a kiss,” said coach Ariana Johnson. “She was in heaven.”

The cat’s what first got Andrew Marogi’s attention. He’d moved on to MTU’s Rowing Club, where he faced off against fellow first-year chemical engineering major William Birach on a rowing machine.

“I’m having a great time,” he said.

“Aside from your crushing defeat at rowing,” Birach said in response, earning a “Come at me bro!” from Marogi.

Apurv Naman, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, was grabbing some chicken tenders and macaroni and cheese after watching the bike show.

“I’ve been looking forward to it,” he said. “It was really good stress relief.”