Pantherpalooza, Eastern Illinois University’s student involvement fair, for the 2025 fall semester is being moved to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in South Quad as a part of Welcome Weekend.
The reason for the move stems from Eastern cutting the volunteer program Jumpstart this year in an effort to be more “fiscally responsible,” according to Director of the Student Life Office Ceci Brinker.
“It’s a weekend so critical [Eastern] didn’t want to leave a void behind,” said Brinker.
Following the announcement, Madison Veatch, a first-year public administration graduate student and graduate assistant in the office of leadership and engagement, initially found the change to be difficult to plan around as Pantherpalooza was originally planned to be on the third week of classes before the change was made over the summer.
This led to some larger organizations not yet signing up for the event as they were difficult to contact over the summer via email, she said.
To counteract this, Veatch has allocated 100 to 125 tables as extra room in case any organizations who find out about the change last minute still want to have a spot at the event.
Another challenge she expects to face this year is having four hours to take down Pantherpalooza and begin preparing for the university programming board event happening later Saturday night.
The move also leaves Pantherpalooza’s former slot as a part of Student Government Week on campus vacant, but Veatch says plans are being made to do RSO focused roundtables in its place.
With this being Pantherpalooza’s first time happening during Welcome Weekend, Veatch said she has mixed feelings about how the event will turn out despite the 87 groups of RSOs or other student organizations already signed up for the event.
Veatch believes first-year students will be excited the event is happening in the first place but that the change could negatively impact returning students unaware of the change.
“We can only do so much with marketing to get [the change] out to people, and I think that students might not have a negative response day-of, but if they see Pantherpalooza already happened, they might because they missed out on it,” she said.
Veatch also noted that first-year students are more likely to attend Pantherpalooza as the event will be located in South Quad, which is closer to the residence halls as opposed to the event’s former location in Library Quad.
Whether or not Pantherpalooza will continue to be hosted at the beginning of Welcome Weekend each year remains to be seen, but Veatch sees things going either way.
“If it goes well with fewer student groups and departments, I think it will stay,” said Veatch. “If it goes poorly, I think that Ceci [Brinker] and our office will push to put it back where it was, because Pantherpalooza was a successful event where it was.”
Despite seeing both outcomes as a possibility, Veatch personally advocates for the event to go back to its original spot for student groups to have proper time to prepare.
“It’s going to be frustrating to some students in student groups, especially if they missed the memo earlier in the summer when we sent out the email,” she said.
Luke Brewer can be reached at 581-2812 or at [email protected].
