VEISHEA

VEISHEA (pronounced "VEE-sha") was an annual week-long celebration held each spring on the campus of Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. The celebration featured an annual parade and many open-house demonstrations of the university facilities and departments. Campus organizations exhibited products, technologies, and hold fund raisers for various charity groups. In addition, VEISHEA brought speakers, lecturers, and entertainers to Iowa State, and throughout its over eight-decade history it has hosted such distinguished guests as Bob Hope, John Wayne, Tony Bruno, Presidents Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan, and Lyndon Johnson, and performers Diana Ross, Mike Jones (rapper), Billy Joel, Sonny and Cher, the Goo Goo Dolls and The Black Eyed Peas. VEISHEA was the largest student run festival in the nation, bringing in tens of thousands of visitors to the campus each year.

In 2014 a disturbance led the President Steven Leath to suspend VEISHEA, and in August 2014 Leath announced that VEISHEA was being permanently discontinued with the VEISHEA name being retired.

The name of the festival was an acronym for the colleges of the university that existed when the festival was founded in 1922:

The Iowa State Daily, the university's student newspaper, has spelled VEISHEA as an acronym and as a word, with only the first letter capitalized. Official university paraphernalia regarding the event still put it in full caps, per the trademark owned by VEISHEA and maintained by Iowa State University Trademark Licensing.

In the early 1900s, the campus of what was then known as Iowa State College was host to multiple events in the spring, as each college celebrated its history and recruited prospective students by holding an individual celebration—such as the Ag Carnival, the Home Economists' "HEC Day," and the Engineers' St. Patrick's Day Parade. In 1922 it was decided that by combining the separate celebrations, it would be possible to preserve tradition without students taking time off from several consecutive weeks of class. Additionally, a large celebration would be a more effective advertisement for the university than several small celebrations. Professor Frank "Shorty" Paine conceptualized the name "VEISHEA" in order to allow the combined celebration to pay homage to each of the colleges and celebrations from which it was born.

...
Wikipedia