Late NIITe is an event hosted by the Union Board and the Office of Student Life (OSL), in coordination with Chartwells (Illinois Tech’s food service provider) and many other vendors. Hosted between 9 p.m. to 11 p.m., this year’s Late NIITe fell on February 28. The event takes place across most of the McCormick Tribune Campus Center (MTCC), which necessitates its closure between 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. beforehand. While there are many great aspects of the event I’d like to discuss, I first want to go through the event chronologically and discuss some of the logistical issues I noticed with the event.
I’d like to start before the event, with the advertising. In past years, I found dedicated emails advertising the event the few days before the event itself, sent by the then-Office of Campus Life and the Residence Hall Assembly. These emails, pushed to what I presume was the entire student body, included the time of the event, information about the event, requirements to enter (namely, ID and a waiver), and protocols for outside guests. These emails also included an online waiver form, which students were encouraged to fill out ahead of time for expedited entry. This year, as far as I could tell, there were no such emails. There was a nondescript mention in February 24th’s newsletter by OSL, but only included a date, start time, location, and theme. There was no mention of its closing at 11 p.m., the attractions available, the early closing of MTCC, or, most importantly, waivers, a fact that I will return to shortly. I personally only became aware of the event on February 26, when I started to see posters and advertisements on the TV screens around campus.
Knowing my experience from past years, I arrived 10 minutes early to the South entrance of MTCC, where I historically remember long lines originating from. However, when I arrived, I was met with only a few small groups of confused students, a greater number of students attempting to enter MTCC (presumably to make a stop to 7-eleven), and a few public safety officers. After a few minutes, the students who were waiting for the event were redirected to the East entrance of MTCC. There, a small line started to form, which eventually accumulated onto Wabash Avenue, probably to the minor annoyance of the few drivers attempting to navigate through. 9 p.m. came with no fanfare, and after a few minutes, students funneled into the emergency exit at the South-East corner of MTCC. While many of us were now out of the cold as we took place in the side hall South of the admissions center, we still stood in line, not moving, for about 15 minutes. During this time, I am unsure of what exactly was going on. The desks were staffed, and I saw occasional staff member move to and from the sign-in desk, but no students were allowed in. There were some unruly students demanding entry, and as time went on, I noticed a few students leave the line, but, at 9:15 p.m., the line started to move.
However, unlike previous times I had been, it was moving at a crawl. About five minutes after the line started to move, it became clear why this was: no one had prefilled a waiver. How could they have? It was never sent out prior to the event, or if it was, not through a channel that was evident to most students. So instead, students had to either fill out a paper waiver at the desk, or scan a QR code to fill it out online. One by one, students shuffled in. I was about 30th in line, and I finally got in at 9:30 p.m. after filling out my paper waiver, meaning by a very rough estimate, students were being admitted at a rate of two students/minute. When I got in at 9:30 p.m., the entire place was a ghost town, when in previous years, 30 minutes after opening would have been one of the busiest times for the event. The dance floor was empty, booths were seeing meager attendance, and even the commons, which would ordinarily be so dense as to be genuinely difficult to navigate, more so resembled its attendance in between meal periods.
Slowly but surely, students made their way into the event. The event itself was good, do not get me wrong. There were a variety of attractions that were classic hits with the students: air brush face painting, caricature artists, a mechanical bull ride. Refreshments were plenty across MTCC, alongside trash bins. The theme itself went for a South-West theme, which, as someone from the South and South-West, was nicely nostalgic. Students wore pink cowboy hats reminiscent of a mid-2010s millennial aesthetic without the gaudiness. And I would be remiss as to not mention the free food. I suspect this is probably the main attraction to a good portion of students. Chartwells did a great job this year, with plenty of options loosely related to the theme, including chili dogs and fries, a chicken and mashed potato bowl, walking tacos, and a vegan coleslaw beans and cornbread plate. They also offered complimentary Redbull and Vietnamese style iced coffee, and a whole display of sweets.
Even as I made my leave at 9:50 p.m., the event seemed to be quiet. The Commons had filled up closer to its weekday meal attendance, but still a far cry from the crowded mess hall I was expecting. Walking around MTCC gave much of the same vibe. Smaller attractions did seem to be accumulating a line at this point. A second line at the East entrance of MTCC had seemed to open up, though the scale of the line I could not ascertain. The line at the South-East entrance, where I had came in, seemed to be terminating at this point, which to me implies they were able to speed up the check-in process, but probably not without losing students to line fatigue.
I think the overall experience, at least for the first half of the event, is summarized quite well by the title. The event itself was great, with all of the elements for a successful Late NIITe. But some poor logistics and advertising on the part of Union Board seems to have given Late NIITe a rough start, and the vibes weren’t quite there even an hour into the event, what had historically been a peak time for Late NIITes of the past. Two story posts made by iitstudentlife on Instagram summarized it well. The first is a similar overlook of the dance floor I had shown above, with the caption “where is everyone??”, and the second, posted approximately two hours later, with decent crowd on the dance floor, jumping alongside Talon the Hawk dawning a white cowboy hat. The event itself was good, it just took a little while to get there.