With Unofficial’s traditional first weekend of March date on the horizon, we feel compelled to address the current state of this long-standing University of Illinois student celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding whether or not it will happen in 2021, and what that means for its future.
As a brief aside, last year, we were
this close to publishing an Editorial Board piece discussing how Unofficial should be embraced community-wide, a take not too dissimilar to the one we published in 2013. An “official” Unofficial could be a charitable fundraising mechanism that benefits our community. Villainizing students for drinking from early in the morning into the night seems a bit hypocritical given the celebration of other booze-based activities in the community (tailgating, Oktoberfest, etc.), so perhaps we should lighten up and just embrace it. If we did that, perhaps it could change for the better.