Every year, the Union Board and the Office of Student Life team up to take over campus for one night, and that night is Late NIITe. And this was my first time attending this. This year, Late NIITe was conducted on March 6th, 2026, starting from 8:30 PM till midnight. I got there around 8:45 PM, checked in, and walked in not really knowing what to expect. That uncertainty lasted about thirty seconds.
I won’t lie, at first, there were not a lot of people. The event had just commenced, and I was one of the very first groups of people to get there. So, it looked like any other day at the MTCC. The first thing I clocked was the paint tattoo parlor right near the entrance. A pair of artists were already working on someone’s arm, doing this detailed design that looked way better than anything temporary has any right to look. So, naturally I waited and got a tattoo done myself. I still have it on as I’m typing this.
From there it kind of just unfolded. There was a DJ floor already going, and a caricature stall down the hall. There was mini golf set up with real obstacles. A custom hat booth where someone would graffiti your hat on the spot. There was a huge crowd right from the start, and I was one of them. People were walking around wearing hats for the rest of the night. A gambling area that had the full casino energy with none of the consequences, which is honestly the ideal version of gambling. Roller skating in one corner. And food; lots of free food absolutely everywhere, the kind of spread where you grab something small and end up standing there for ten minutes just because the area had a good vibe.
And then there was the mechanical bull. I don’t know how to explain why watching strangers get thrown off a mechanical bull is so universally entertaining, but it is, and it was. There was always a crowd around it. Always someone hyping up the next person. Always someone absolutely biting it in spectacular fashion within the first four seconds. It was a highlight every single time I walked past it, which was several times, because I kept ending up back there.
Around 9:30 PM, I slipped into the hall just as Michael Kent (Instagram) was getting started. Over the course of an hour, running until about 10:30, he worked through an impressive range of material: Rubik’s cubes, rope tricks, card work, and more, each routine landing harder than the last. The room stayed full the entire time, which says something when there’s a DJ floor and a mechanical bull competing for people’s attention just outside. Kent had a way of making everyone in the room feel like they were part of the same moment rather than just watching from a distance. By the end, people were genuinely trying to work out what they had just seen. It was a strong show, easily one of the highlights of the night.
After that, I just kind of floated around for the rest of the night. Grabbed more food. Watched more people fall off the bull. The DJ floor had really filled out by this point, and the energy in there was completely different from when I’d first walked past it, darker, louder, people actually dancing rather than just standing near the dancing. It had found its groove.
At one point, I headed over to the roller skating rink. I will not be sharing my performance in detail, except to say that the floor and I became closely acquainted at least five times. It was genuinely fun, though, the kind of fun that comes specifically from being bad at something in a low-stakes environment with people around you in the same situation. When the skating wrapped up, that was naturally when my friends and I called it too. It was around midnight by then, the event winding down around us at the same pace we were. We hadn’t really been watching the clock; the night had just moved, the way good nights do. We walked out among the last people there, which, for a first Late Nite, felt like the right way to do it.
The only places I didn’t get to check out were the gambling area and the caricature stall; both had crowds that weren’t really worth battling through. Which, honestly, is its own kind of review. If people are that reluctant to leave a line, something’s going right. Though I’ll also admit that spending the better part of an hour on the skating rink probably didn’t help my chances of getting to everything.
One last thing. When I was checking in, someone from the organizing team asked me how I felt about Late NIITe. And, I said I didn’t know, I have no expectations, because I genuinely didn’t. This is my first time. It took me an embarrassingly long time after that to realize how that must have landed. I want to be clear: I did not mean it that way. I debated going back to clarify it once I realized it. I didn’t have the chance to do that either. Please consider this an apology. I had a blast. Truly.