Northwestern students celebrate a lot of different holidays, such as Christmas, Easter, Eid al-Fitr, Mawlid-al-Nabi, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur, among many others. Regardless of your faith, there is one holiday that most Northwestern students celebrate, which is the high holy Dillo Day.

Dillo Day is a special day on a Saturday, late in Spring Quarter when musical artists come to Northwestern and perform for the students and their guests. Guests, as a term, is pretty vague — I remember smuggling a fraternity alum or two in 2019 to watch Teyana Taylor and A$AP Ferg. Drinking is a significant part of Dillo Day, in the standard college, “we won’t know unless y’all really mess up” way. (For future reference, Chicken Shack on Emerson Street and Clarke’s, now on Davis Street, are remarkable hangover cures).

In 2020, Dillo Day was canceled, like all the other fun celebrations that year. In 2021, however, Northwestern hosted a virtual Dillo Day with Omar Apollo and Playboi Carti as headliners. I didn’t watch any of it since I was applying to summer internships and going to Howard Street for food. But I noticed one thing while biking.

Evanston was alive with people.

For the first time in a year, I saw people’s whole faces. On the sidewalk. No longer do I have to guess who someone is based on their forehead. Now, I can see their faces and act accordingly. I had to wait 20 minutes at Cold Stone Creamery that night.

All my claims, in any other year, would be bland enough for a bedtime story. But I, and every reader of this article, just lived through a generational pandemic. I’ve been in Evanston for nearly a whole year, from Summer 2020 to the end of Spring 2021, and I’ve never seen as much joy and fun as I saw on Dillo Day. I realized I missed the banality of college life.

Two things fell right on Dillo for Evanston to be eclectic. 

First, the Centers for Disease Control and the State of Illinois proclaimed that wearing masks outdoors was unnecessary, given what we know about coronavirus spreading. Second, the day before, Northwestern’s website announced that there were 0 coronavirus cases in the week before. No cases among students, staff, or faculty — folks, it was a miracle and a great example of vaccine efficacy.

Is the global pandemic over? No, of course not, as I’ve written about before. For one day, though, Evanston got a glimpse of what a post-pandemic life could be. And that life was beautiful. Hopefully, Fall 2021 will shine even brighter.

Sterling Ortiz is a SESP junior. He can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.