Members of the Veishea Task Force suggest that Veishea may no longer be a “traditional” event and question if it justifies the resources to continue.

The Veishea Task Force met May 22 for its regular meeting to discuss Veishea’s relevancy and the continued mindset of Veishea being more of a party week than a celebration for the university.

Michael Owen, Faculty Senate representative, said that the largest benefit from the official Veishea events was no longer the traditional or student recruitment aspects but rather development of student leadership.

Eric Peterson, 2006 Veishea general co-chairman, said that he felt that the role of the Veishea chairs was more to keep certain Veishea traditions alive rather than to evolve or customize Veishea.

“Honestly, when I was becoming more and more involved, it didn’t feel like it was [my] celebration, it was more being the best steward of the tradition,” Peterson said.

Peterson said that aside from the parade and Stars Over Veishea  — something that has also changed much since its inception — not many of the official Veishea week activities were truly “traditional” events, a point that received several nods from the task force.

The task force also reviewed a summary of open forum, email and website comments, skimming through and taking note of the more realistic suggestions and recommendations provided.

However, most of the members were adamant that there was a glaring “tradition” of Veishea riots.

“Look at the history and the psychological information we had repeatedly put in front of us,” said University Counsel Paul Tanaka. “There is an association of disturbances and Veishea.”

Several members did note that no other event had the opportunity or ability to collect more than 30,000 attendees on Central Campus at one time like Veishea. Such an event would be difficult to replace or split and maintain the same level of participation.

Warren Madden, senior vice president for business and finance, said that many of the “traditional” events have had increasingly less attendance and participation, and that the major activities have quickly become a single-day event, despite the enormous resources and student leadership devoted to it.

Madden specifically cited Stars Over Veishea and its waning participation and performance numbers.

May 22’s meeting was also the first time the group has spent a significant amount of time discussing the alternative forms for a “dead” Veishea. It discussed how to take the “good” and “traditional” activities and place them among other major university events such as Homecoming.

Tom Hill, senior vice president for student affairs and chairman of the task force, asked that the members think of what a “dead” Veishea would mean for the university and what would be done to replace the activities and traditions, if anything.

The deadline for data collection and submission is May 23, which is when the writers will begin creating a draft proposal for President Steven Leath’s recommendation deadline of June 30.

All meetings are open to the public and past meetings can be viewed at veisheataskforce.iastate.edu. You can contact the group directly and submit comments via email to [email protected].