Each year at the end of October, the students and alumni come together to celebrate what is one of the most anticipated events of the entire school year, Homecoming. Everyone throws on their Monmouth apparel and comes together to support the football team. The club and Greek organizations show off their floats while the communication organizations come together to report on the day’s events via radio, television and news. The Homecoming court is announced and we find out who was elected king and queen in addition to the other ranks.
Due to the weather this year, one can’t help but feel shorted on the whole Homecoming experience.
Obviously the University cannot control the weather, but does anyone really know who was even elected king and queen? What about all the hard work the club and Greek organizations put into their floats? The communication branches relocated their festivities upstairs into the MAC, but there were no e-mails or notifications sent out letting anyone know. Overall, the day’s events seemed rather unorganized.
The parade was not officially cancelled until about 15 minutes prior to start time. Three floats ended up running and the prize money was split amongst them. But where does that leave the rest of the floats, will they not have an opportunity to show off their hard work? All of this leads to the question of whether or not Homecoming should be rescheduled. Moreover, can Homecoming even be rescheduled?
The opinion here at The Outlook was split almost evenly, with the majority leaning towards the idea that you can’t reschedule an event as large as Homecoming. The students who are not graduating this year were impartial to the idea of rescheduling; they figured there will be other Homecoming celebrations, and nothing could have been done about the weather.
The graduating seniors on the other hand were a little upset with how events played out at this year’s Homecoming and felt the students best interests were not taken into account when dealing with the weather. There were no e-mails sent out the morning of in regards to the game, the floats, the tailgating or the court. Some feel that the event should be rescheduled before the semester ends so we aren’t forced to miss out on everything.
Despite all the activities failing to take place, there is a bigger picture here that needs to be addressed. Homecoming is one of six home games. Why is it that in order for the student body to be excited over a football game and get together to show school spirit for the team it has to be labeled “Homecoming?” What about the other five home games of the year? It isn’t a surprise to anyone that school spirit is severely lacking here at the University. We need to take the “Homecoming mentality” and apply it to the entire season.