NEIU students at the El Centro campus say they want more fun events. Although NEIU has many recreational or “fun” events, many are held at the main campus.
There have been many events announced at NEIU, including the Fine Arts Center Gallery exhibition: “Inverse Proportion: Art as (not) Labor”, 2nd Annual Department of Music and Dance Collage Concert, Fall Opera Scenes, and more. All of these and more on the University Event Calendar, are mostly held at the main campus.
NEIU students at El Centro are aware of this trend. They did notice some of the events like the Golden Tour, FAFSA Workshop, and La Taquiza. But only one of those events was intended to be “fun” while the other events were more of a “necessity”. This made El Centro Students question the lack of recreational or “fun” events at El Centro.
“I think it would be beneficial to have more events than what we have right now because it could build more of a community within El Centro.” Brandon Sanic, an El Centro student who’s planning to major in communication, media and theater said, as well as mentioning that there are fewer students at El Centro compared to the main campus. “Since we don’t have, like, a ton of students, I think it would be nice if we had more things to like, bring us all together.”
Daniela Torres, an El Centro student who is planning to major in psychology and is part of the TRIO program, said NEIU is not using the El Centro campus at its maximum capabilities for recreational events, saying “I think that they can use it like more, like have more students here, like to take more advantage.” “I feel like, if you do it a month before, it gives more people time to look at such flyers, and so more people can show up,” Isaiah Rodriguez, another El Centro student, planning to major in sociology said about how events are promoted on both the main and El Centro campuses.
“A lot of people, like a good amount of people showed up, I think it just brings the community, like more together,” Isaiah Rodriguez said of La Taquiza and how it proves that we need more events like it.
In addition, NEIU students have said they have difficulty finding what events are happening at El Centro. Most event-related information is found in the University Event Calendar but there are only four past events listed at El Centro and only two past events at the Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies (CCICS).
There are no future events listed for either campus as of writing this article. This is because events for the other locations are listed outside the University Event Calendar tab but instead found in their own separate tabs on the NEIU website, under El Centro Upcoming Events and Carruthers Events, making events for those campuses harder to find.
