The Wildcat Pantry’s end-of-year celebration was originally meant to be held on the lawn just outside of Northside Commons at 3 p.m. on Friday, May 29. The Ellensburg wind had other plans.
The night before the event, a wind advisory was posted for Kittitas Valley, warning of “Northwest winds 25 to 35 mph with gusts up to 50 mph,” according to the National Weather Service. The day of, the winds kicked in, and the event had to be moved during setup, despite efforts to keep things on track.
Wildcat Pantry Coordinator Charles Johnson organized the event alongside his programming team lead, Cesca Gossing, a child development and family science graduate student. At the beginning of the event, they both witnessed the wind blowing in.
The end-of-year celebration is one of the largest events that the Wildcat Pantry hosts, Johnson said. “The Wildcat Pantry always does an end-of-year celebration. It started … as a way of just celebrating all the work that students had put in to get this far, especially since we were founded by students for students.”
“Since then, it’s evolved into just a celebration of all the work that students continue to do,” Johnson continued. “We have a ton of volunteers that we like to always honor during our end-of-year celebration. And it’s really just a way of saying ‘thank you’ to our students who have brought us this far. We’ve done so much this year, launching new programs, establishing a higher fee and we wouldn’t have been able to do it without student support at all.”
Set-up for the event continued despite the wind advisory. According to Gossing, the event had been in the planning phase since winter quarter and the date had been pre-selected long before weather could be factored in.
Wildcat Pantry staff and volunteers set up their tables, tents and racks of free clothing on the lawn. 88.1 The Burg set up their DJ booth next to Dugmore Hall’s bike racks. Dining Services set up their catering table outside of Northside Commons. Cornhole and Giant Connect-4 games were also set up on the lawn.
As the event began, so did the winds, which became strong enough to warrant rocks being used to weigh down items on tables. Johnson, Gossing and Student Inventory Lead and Third-Year Business Administration major Alonzo Avila all noted that Johnson had to buy 60-pound sandbags from Ace Hardware to keep the tents in place. These sandbags were ineffective, and Wildcat Pantry staff resorted to holding the tents down themselves.
As Johnson recalled, “I come back [from buying sandbags] and the wind is ten times worse. So it was a last-minute decision of, ‘I know it’s 3 o’clock, I know we’re supposed to start. However, this event can’t be successful in the environment we have it in right now.’ It was me and my programming lead [Cesca Gossing]. I pulled her aside in the library and told her, ‘…We can either move inside to the pantry, to the [library] fourth floor or we can stay outside. What do you think?’”
Gossing replied to Johnson, “Let’s try the fourth floor, but if there’s students up there and they don’t want us there because it is first and foremost a study space, then we won’t.”
“We asked them [students and staff in the library] if they would be okay if we moved up here and they were all fine with it. So I immediately called the other team lead,” Gossing continued.
With permission to proceed, Gossing called Avila, who was at the time helping hold down one of the tents on the Northside Commons lawn. She told him, “Alonzo, we’re moving everything inside. Just grab everything and let’s go.”
Avila intentionally relayed the phone call to everyone on the Northside Commons lawn. “I said it really loudly, ‘Oh, we’re moving. It’s confirmed.’”
Johnson quickly moved some furniture around in The Attic of the library while all the event employees, volunteers and even multiple community members attending aided in taking down the tents and moving everything across the street. Along with the Wildcat Pantry, both 88.1 The Burg and Dining Services brought their respective set-ups into The Attic as well.
Chris Keitges, another Child Development and Family Science graduate student, volunteered at the event with her five-year-old granddaughter and enjoyed helping with the sudden move. She said, “That was adventurous. It was fun trying to take those tents down. There was a couple times I thought maybe some of the tents were going to take off.”
Cece Laplace, a fourth-year Chemistry major, arrived at the event with a group of friends right as everything was being moved to the library. They were among the community members who stepped in to aid in the move.
Laplace said of their decision, “We were just coming over for the event, we saw people that needed help and things work better if you work together.”
At about 3:40 p.m., the actual end-of-year celebration was finally able to begin with Johnson taking a moment to thank everyone for their patience and willingness to help with the sudden venue change.
Gossing and Johnson said they were both impressed by the turnout the event saw, with Gossing stating that within about twenty minutes, she had “already filled out like four pages of the sign-in. So that’s pretty good. I just feel accomplished for even planning the event in the first place.”
Johnson cited the raffle with “free prizes that you actually want” as a factor in the high turnout, while Laplace cited the “free food”.
Toward the end of the celebration, the raffle winners were pulled for seven prizes. Students, regardless of whether they attended the event as guests or workers, were allowed to enter the raffle. Among the winners, Daniel Biggs, a Business major attending the event, won a Blackstone Griddle and Riley Emmett, a Wildcat Pantry student employee, won a pair of beach chairs.
Other prizes awarded included two separate hot pots, a longboard, a “beach kit”– a sunhat, cooler and beach towel– and a Stanley cup with a Hydroflask-branded insulated tote bag.
As an additional thank you to a handful of community members who frequently aided the Wildcat Pantry throughout the year, Gossing and Johnson awarded certificates of appreciation.
“You should never feel judged entering any sort of any one of our spaces because we are not judging you,” Gossing said, speaking to the purpose of the pantry. “We are the last people to judge you because we’re all in the same boat. We are all living in this economy–we are all living in this world right now. And it’s really hard to get by, especially being– what? 18 to 22, living in an apartment where you’re paying $750 of rent and you don’t have enough money to feed yourself? Yeah. So, the Wildcat Pantry is accessible for every student. And no one should ever be ashamed to use a resource that is for them that they pay for.”
