Unofficial is one of the biggest events of the year and there is much organization and preparation that goes into the day.

Unofficial took place March 4 and the day is filled with parties at multiple locations. At these parties, locations have to be set it and supplies must be bought prior to the event.

Jordan Socarras, a junior business administration, played a role in planning Unofficial.

Socarras said that he was already friends with the people that set Unofficial up in the past and said that he was “passed the torch” along with his other friends.

“For the past two months, we’ve been meeting regularly and planning the details to make Unofficial happen,” Socarras said.

To start out the process, Socarras said he and his friends hosted a T-Shirt competition and he said he and his friends had many submissions to choose from. After the design is chosen, they get the design put on the T-Shirts at a manufacturing company on 18^th St. They provided the T-Shirts from Unofficial last year.

The money from the T-Shirts goes towards the renting and getting other supplies for the day.

Last year, 550 T-Shirts were sold for Unofficial, Socarras said, and this year, 835 shirts were cold. Socarras said that not everyone that attends Unofficial is expected to buy a shirt, so they were expecting a larger crowd, specifically 1200-1500 people.

Socarras said choosing the houses is the best part of preparing Unofficial.

Socarras said they already know some groups and Greek organizations on campus, so they know where to look in that department.

“We look around into who has a good yard to be able to hold that many people,” Socarras said. “So this year, is fun to kind of switch of switch up the scenery that they usually do for unofficial.”

One of the places that hosted an event was Ike’s. Socarras said that since it was his first year planning, he wanted to “add something different.”

“I know that after the house crawl ends, usually there is a dead period before anything happens at night, so I asked Ike’s if they would be willing to host a DJ out on their patio,” Socarras said.

The DJ was one of Socarras’s former coworkers at Pagliai’s Pizza.

“I know that he was [a member of Sigma Pi Fraternity] a couple years ago, and I know that he has some history DJing at Stews and Marty’s, so when I was trying to think of a DJ, he came to mind,” Socarras said. “I shot him a text and he was down, so we made it happen from there.”

Socarras said it was cool to see people from different universities to join the festivities.

He said people from Chicago, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and Illinois State University came out.

“It really started to hit me how big this is gonna be when the news showed up to our T-Shirt handouts on that Thursday,” Socarras said. “So, it was really cool to see how big and how successful this event turned out.”

Socarras said the biggest goal of hosting Unofficial is making sure that the day runs as smoothly as possible and to take safety into consideration. He said safety is something that they try to take care of as best as they can.

Cam’ron Hardy can be reached at 581-2812 or at dennewsdesk@gmail.com.