It’s Homecoming, so as the “campus issues” columnist, I thought it would be fitting to discuss my take on it. This article started with an explanation as to why Homecoming does not incite any sort of excitement for me, but it turned into a pseudo-history and considerations for future Homecomings.
The obvious and mundane explanation of my disinterest in Homecoming is simply my lack of school spirit. I don’t understand this notion of coming back to MU after graduation. If I’m coming back to Columbia, it’s to see my parents.
When I move on from this unchanging underlying reaction to MU, Homecoming, for me, has other problematic issues.
First, let me applaud the progress the Homecoming Committees have made during the past five years. Reading the various articles in The Maneater makes it very clear that before I entered the university, Homecoming was a very Greek weekend. There was little to no minority inclusion or discussion about it, RHA involvement or anything to make the institution community friendly.
Since I have been a student here, Homecoming has always been a big deal, and I couldn’t appreciate until now how pervasive its influence was throughout the various non-Greek facets of my life.
Freshman year through ResLife, I participated in door decs downtown. Now as a senior, I know the Homecoming Steering Committee is putting forth a conscious, concerted effort to include more diverse demographics by going through ORG. I’m not participating, but I know they are trying.
OK, I lied. This year, the usually closed-off talent show was live streamed. Even this naysayer couldn’t resist the voyeuristic appeal of watching the Greeks in their natural habitat.
Onward to the issues I have with Homecoming.
It’s incredibly wasteful: the pomping, the time, the materials, the whole lot of it.
For those who aren’t familiar with the process behind door decorations (commonly referred to as door decs), they are a part of the Homecoming competition, which also includes the talent show, blood drive, canned food drive and parade.
Pomping is the name of the process of creating the door decs and involves members of the partnered sorority and fraternity to take a small piece of paper, wrap it around a pencil, stick it in pomp (flour-based glue) and stick it into the pomping material.
The materials themselves seem like a waste to someone who is not in the culture. The time spent pomping, I know, is obscene.
There are horror stories of brothers and sisters making up their required time in a 48-hour pomping marathon.
Yes, the Greek community has tried making this more eco-friendly, but nothing screams “to the contrary” like spending gobs of money on a material-heavy thing that is only seen in public for 12 hours.
The next issue I wish to quickly address is race in Homecoming. This is an issue brought up yearly, but nothing is done about it.
According to the BLACKout (the National Association of Black Journalists’ online publication), in 1985 “LBC developed its own Homecoming theme … as a protest against the general homecoming theme ‘Show me an old Mizzou.’ Black students felt the original theme harkened back to days of institutionalized racism and a homogeneous student body.”
Personally, I do not think of LBC’s Homecoming as separatist from the white majority, but rather and unfortunately, from the other minority communities on campus. I would argue that the black Homecoming is about as isolating as the white one (Sorry, regular Homecoming). I understand this is an LBC event, but it makes other minority communities feel kind of unwanted. It sends a message that these smaller communities don’t have anywhere to fit in either.
Homecoming is getting better, which is something we cannot argue over. The blood drive — and this year, the bone marrow drive — and the massive countrywide volunteering hours make Homecoming a more open and inclusive MU event. I think that to take it to the next level, the Homecoming Steering Committee and LBC’s Homecoming should continue focusing on inclusivity.
