For the majority of Texans, high school homecoming has always been a big deal; the dance, the mums and the alumni coming home. All of it became so important that it created a week-long event.
Coming from New York City, however, I never cared about homecoming – a statement that I feel resonates to a surprising degree with the vast majority of Texas State students. To college students in general, the tailgate associated with every football game seems to be far more important than the game itself, let alone things like homecoming events.
What Texas State students care about even less than homecoming, though, is homecoming royalty. A vast majority of students don’t pay attention to who is in the running for homecoming royalty and they don’t vote for winners.
As a matter of fact, last year, the carefully selected dormitory Dukes and Duchesses did not do anything after being picked, placing the point of the whole process under question.
“I didn’t go to homecoming last year,” studio art sophomore Aris Gonzales-Chiman said. “None of the events, nothing. I have to be there this year, but I’m really not excited for it at all.”
Texas State Homecoming lasts from Oct. 22-28, and includes a wide range of events like an office decorating contest that lasts the whole week to, of course, a football game at 6 p.m. on Saturday in Bobcat Stadium. Other events include TXST’s Got Talent, a Soap Box Derby along with a Spirit Parade & Pep Rally and an Alumni Gala.
A key issue is money getting taken out of the school budget for homecoming events. Money spent on homecoming could instead be used to increase campus safety, decrease tuition costs or create more parking space. Issues like these ring much closer to home for Texas State students than the question of who’s going to be Homecoming King or Queen this year.
Florida A&M spent just short of $300,000 on homecoming in 2017, and in 2016 organizing homecoming events cost the University of Arizona over $160,000.
While homecoming was, for some, a pretty big event in high school, college students don’t seem to care about it nearly as much. So why do we continue it? It doesn’t make sense to keep doing something the vast majority of the community lacks interest in. In addition, it isn’t important to carry over certain high school traditions to college if the student body is almost entirely dispassionate about those traditions.
Though Texas State has tried to revamp this year’s homecoming celebration by adding events such as Boko’s Homecoming Bash and Thursday Night Lights, whether or not it will be enough to keep the student body engaged in certain traditions is up for debate.
While the idea of homecoming isn’t bad, and clearly worked in high school, the current execution of it and interest in it in university is so poor perhaps it is best not done at all.
-Nikita Arefiev is an international relations freshman
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