The Hawkeye club hosted its annual Movie Night annual fundraiser on January 13. The event was heavily supported by students, specifically freshmen, as it was their first movie night. The Hawkeye business team was responsible for planning, organizing, and executing this annual event. Flawlessly executing movie night required a great deal of planning right from the venue, movie selection, promoting the event, selling tickets, securing food donations from local restaurants, organizing and setting up the food trays, and then finally cleaning up. This required a number of volunteers to come together to make it a memorable experience for students attending the movie night. 

The organizers selected Jumanji starring the late Robin Williams as the movie for Hawkeye Movie Night. A quarter century after its release, Jumanji continues to be a movie night favorite. 

The members of the Hawkeye Business team were engaged in running the ticket counter while others were setting up the food and refreshment booth for the event.

The Hawkeye Business team did a great job in receiving support from local businesses in the form of food donations for the movie night. The generous restaurants included Olive Garden, Jersey Mike’s Subs, Bareburger, Casa Romeo, Friendly’s, and many more. A wide variety of restaurants provided great food choices that included fries, burgers, chicken wings, pasta, breadsticks, and ice cream.

“In preparation for movie night, our largest obstacle was finding restaurants to donate food for the event itself,’’ said junior Ishan Ray. “It took time to go from restaurant to restaurant asking for donations and it was disappointing when restaurants declined to donate. However, we eventually got enough donations from many local restaurants, leading to a successful event.”

Before the movie started, the line for the food and refreshments arranged on the back table quickly grew as students wanted to watch the movie while enjoying the delicious food. Students lined up at the food booth and were served food by volunteers from the Hawkeye Business Department.

“The environment was amazing and the movie was a great choice because it is a classic,” said junior Aryan Nehru. “I could not take my eyes off the screen. Overall I had a great time and hope to come back next year.”

Once the movie ended, there was loud applause as people greatly enjoyed the experience. The Hawkeye team thanked the audience members for coming to the event and people began to leave while members of the Hawkeye Business Department began cleaning up the food booth. There was plenty of extra food available which was given to audience members. The amazing custodial staff that helped with the setup and cleanup of the event were also able to enjoy the food and were surprised by the large spread available.

“The Business Department worked tirelessly to put together a wonderful movie night,”  said Editor-in-Chief senior Sofia Arora. “They coordinated with restaurants who donated food for us to provide at the movie night, sold tickets, and set up the entire event. This is typically our biggest fundraiser of the year, so it was gratifying to see students enjoy good food and a good movie—and to see that our hard work had paid off.” 

The annual Hawkeye Movie Night was a huge success, owing to the hard work of the Hawkeye Business Department and the board for making an enjoyable and stress-relieving experience for JP students.