MU held its annual Mizzou Homecoming Parade on campus and in downtown Columbia on Oct. 20. Students felt that the event’s atmosphere exceeded their expectations in both the parade’s execution as well as the spirit of the community.
This year’s theme was “board games.” MU’s Greek life community spent several weeks creating floats based on the theme and showcased them in the parade.
Charlotte Reynolds, a freshman at Illinois Central College, was impressed by the quality of the floats at the event.
“I intentionally came to visit my friend this weekend because I’ve heard that Homecoming is a really big deal here,” Reynolds said. “And I really liked getting to see all the game floats because I had heard students talking about theirs just last night so I was eager to see what the outcome would be. A lot of them were really well done and you can just tell that a lot of time and effort was spent putting these floats together.”
MU freshman, Taryn Fogarty, also felt the best part of the event was getting to see the floats and how they related to the previous night’s skits.
“I went to the skits last night so it was interesting to see how they incorporated their game from the skit, forming into a float,” Fogarty said.
Fogarty believed MU’s sense of community enhanced the overall Homecoming parade atmosphere.
“I thought the parade was really cool, especially because it wasn’t just like the Mizzou students that were there but rather the entire Columbia community came out to see it,” Fogarty said. “It was neat to see all the different organizations that are in Columbia and not just for the Mizzou campus.”
Reynolds was surprised by the variety shown in the parade as well as the wide span of people who attended the event. Reynolds saw floats ranging between Congress members campaigning to several different high schools representing themselves. Coming from a smaller school that doesn’t have a homecoming, Reynolds was surprised by the large turn out.
“To see people making such a big deal out of something that doesn’t even exist at my college was really interesting and surprising to see,” Reynolds said. “Lots of people showed up, significantly more than I thought would and I didn’t even get to see all of the downtown area, so I can’t imagine what that was like.”
Reynolds felt the parade was executed in such a way that it pleased her even more than she had previously expected it to.
“The parade actually exceeded my expectations. I thought it was really nice and there was a lot going on, but it was very well put together,” Reynolds said.
Fogarty felt the event was light-hearted as a result of many young kids and dogs at the event to support MU.
“I thought it was really cute because there were so many little kids dressed up in tiger apparel, except for this one kid who was dressed as a shark, and there were a lot of dogs, so it was just a really adorable atmosphere,” Fogarty said.
In addition to the thousands of children at the parade, there were thousands of others including students, alumni and members of the Columbia community who all came out to watch the event.
_Edited by Alexandra Sharp | asharp@themaneater.com_