Wedged in between two of the biggest events of Homecoming week is Tent City, a newly named expanded tailgating event that provides all who attend free food, entertainment and a chance for alumni to mingle with their former Eastern classmates.

Tent City will begin at 11:30 a.m. after the Homecoming Parade to 1:30 p.m., when the Homecoming football game starts. The event will be south of the back parking lot outside of O’Brien Stadium.

Rachael Fisher, director of Eastern Student Community Service, said the event is the essence of tailgating.

“We want to bleed blue and let everyone who attends know that we are all Panthers at heart,” Fisher said.

Tent City features tents of all sizes for a variety of organizations including one for each College, office of community service, one for the ROTC and many more.

The largest tent is the one for the Alumni Association, which is responsible for coordinating the event.

The Alumni Association’s 40- by-60 foot tent in the southeast end of the event grounds is set up to be a place for general alumni to go and get information.

Chelsea Fredrick, assistant director of alumni services, said this is not to say that any of the other tents welcome festival-goers and alumni from their field exclusively. She also said the deans of each college keep their tents open for meet and greet opportunities.

Each of Eastern’s academic departments will have space in their respective college’s tent for alumni to go.

Fredrick said some colleges have their own traditions associated with the event. She said for the last few years the College of Arts and Humanities has had an open fire where they cooked ham and beans.

Free food will be a big part of the tailgate. The Homecoming committee’s tent on the west side of the lot will house food from the Rib-eye Shack, a mobile catering service.

Each of the college tents will have free food, as will the Alumni Association’s tent, which will feature chicken wings from Buffalo Wild Wings.

Fredrick said they went through the 3,000 wings they provided last year so quickly that this year they plan to have between 3,500 and 4,000.

Fredrick said they will have a contest associated with the wings; the first 10 people to sign up will be able to take the “Blazing Challenge” where the first person to eat 12 of the hottest hot wings in six minutes will win a prize.

In many ways, the event will be like the tailgating festivities put on by the university every home football game.

There will be a face painting table, a temporary tattoo station and a football throwing targets equipped with radar guns to track ball speed that visitors can hurl footballs through, Fisher said.

The mechanical bull, which has been available to ride at previous tailgate events, will be back but with a new twist. Fisher said there will be a competition for the longest time on the bull at 12:45 p.m., and the rider with the best time on the mechanical bull will win a blue Eastern themed cowboy hat and be recognized at the football game.

The free food, activities and mingling will start to draw to a close when the Panther Marching Band comes to perform at the tailgate at 1 p.m.

After their performance with the Pink Panthers and EIU Cheerleading team, people will begin filing in to the stadium to be in their seats for the 1:30 p.m. Homecoming Football game kick-off, Fisher said.

Doug T. Graham can be reached at 581-7944

or [email protected]