Palousafest Deconstructed aims to deliver a traditional Palousafest experience despite the increased regulations of COVID-19 and altered organization.
Instead of the event occurring relatively early in the semester over the course of a single day, UI’s annual signature event has been held since Sept. 21. Each day of this week has focused on specific categories of campus activities.
Monday featured academic, leadership and honors organizations. Tuesday focused on multicultural and international student organizations along with the equity and diversity units. Wednesday, government,political and civic engagement organizations took the stage. Thursday, sports organizations, both competitive and recreational, will have the floor. Friday will focus on special interest and faith-based organizations. Each day will begins at 11 a.m. and end at 1 p.m.
The schedule for the events can be found under the “Events” tab on the Department of Student Involvement’s (DSI) University of Idaho page.
Laurel Meyer, the head of operations for this year’s festivities and the events and marketing coordinator of DSI, said the changes to Palousafest have been in the works since the middle of the summer.
“What it came to was we didn’t feel confident in our ability to manage the typical crowd size that Palousafest draws, which is typically between 3,000 and 5,000 students,” Meyer said. “We just couldn’t account for controlling a crowd of that size and ensuring a crowd of that size were all wearing masks.”
Each day will have a maximum of 20 tables, with one person per table. Furthermore, tables will be six feet away from each other, hand sanitizer will be present on each table and food and giveaways are not allowed, Meyer said.
In addition to the in-person alterations, a virtual fair was held Sept. 18 over Engage UIdaho, DSI’s platform of choice. Students could browse clubs and departments and speak to members of said clubs/departments virtually.
There is potential for this virtual fair to return in the following years.
“It depends on how well it goes and how long (COVID-19) lasts,” Meyer said. “If this is a few years of needing to offer virtual fairs in order to reduce capacity of in-person fairs, and if it grows in popularity, maybe it’s something we’ll decide to keep.”
ASUI hosted a booth on Wednesday. According to Julie Attinger, the chief of staff and the person who ran the table, the organization went into the event expecting a smaller turnout compared to other years, but still hope to reach interested students.
On a normal year, Palousafest garners mass attention from the student body. While COVID-19 guidelines may cause a drop in attendance, students are still encouraged to attend.
“This is such a weird year to try and get involved in things, but it’s such a great year to do that because a lot of things you normally do aren’t quite the same,” Lauren Carlsen, ASUI president, said. “I’ve only benefited from being involved in things like this and you won’t do that unless you go to Palousafest and figure it out.”
Carter Kolpitcke can be reached at [email protected].