The History and Controversy of Homecoming
Photo by SMU Alumni
Homecoming and its events have been a hot topic in Halifax over the past few weeks, as it ends up being with every homecoming season, with issues and articles being written from at least 2017. Dalhousie’s homecoming weekend included unofficial house parties that ended up spanning multiple blocks around the campus, in violation of multiple COVID protocols. This eventually lead to police involvement, and multiple students were taken to the emergency room. When seeing the photos and reports, two questions come to mind: 1. What would SMU’s Homecoming, the following weekend, look like in the wake of this? 2. What actually is homecoming?
If you’re like me, my idea of homecoming stems primarily from American media. Big football games, parties, a homecoming dance – those are the types of things I think about when it comes to homecoming. I also know that it relates to alumni somehow, but that aspect seems to get less focus in media. As Dal’s Homecoming shows, it seems to be more of an excuse for current students to have huge parties.
Originally, Homecoming was a time when alumni would visit campus and watch the first home football game of the season. Three different schools have claimed to be the first to hold a homecoming: University of Missouri in 1911, Baylor University in Texas in 1909, and University of Illinois in 1910. According to this article, most people recognize Missouri as the beginning of homecoming as we now know it, featuring events like a parade, pep rallies, and a football game – which are now staples of homecoming. Each school has their own claim to hosting the first homecoming, however, the original purpose of these events is that it was a time to welcome alumni back to their alma mater and celebrate their school.
At its core, Homecoming is a time to welcome alumni back to campus to tour around, meet with old friends, and visit their past professors, but different traditions have been added to homecoming over the years, somewhat muddling its original purpose. For example, at Brock University in Ontario, one main event of Homecoming is the Grape Stomp where teams made up primarily of students “crush, throw and slide around in piles of grapes”. In 2014, this event attracted around 1000 participants divided into teams. At Arizona State University, Homecoming features the Lantern Walk, when students, alumni, and even faculty carry lanterns up A Mountain, a butte of volcanic rock featuring a giant “A” at the top. This event has been celebrated since 1917. Despite its somewhat unclear origins, and often strange traditions through Canada and America, it is easy to point out the principal and official events of a homecoming. The massive parties that end up happening during homecoming weekends, while not official by school standards, have certainly become the defining event for students. So, what did SMU’s Homecoming look like when it took place on the weekend of October 1st?
To help with social distancing, one of the main parts of the weekend is what SMU termed the “retrospective tour”, a self-guided tour that featured QR codes outside main buildings on campus that would take students and alumni to a page all about the history of the specific building. Also featured was an event to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Just Us! Coffee, a champion of fair trade services in Nova Scotia, and the Maritime launch of “The Fair Trade Handbook: Building a Better World, Together”.
Photo by Saint Mary’s University. Photo featured on Retrospective Tour of a classroom in McNally c. 1951
As a homecoming weekend, SMU also featured multiple games to kick off the season. Men and women’s soccer against Acadia University were featured on October 1st at the Huskies Stadium. The women’s soccer game ended in a tie against Acadia, and the men’s team won 4-1 for SMU. The following day showcased the first football game of the season against Acadia University, with the Huskies sadly losing that game 14-7. The last game of Homecoming weekend was women’s rugby, again versus Acadia, with the rival school taking the win.
At any school where homecoming takes place, it can be expected that students will have a weekend of drinking and partying, often to the point where it can become out of control – as seen with Dal’s Homecoming weekend. Despite the rich traditions and history, with homecoming having become known only as a weekend to party, to me it seems this shows how much of the intent behind homecoming has been lost over the years. However, it’s not only the students that are to blame. As I said, these massive parties have become the unofficial hallmark event of homecoming, so why do universities appear to struggle to recognize this? Especially during these times of the COVD-19 pandemic, if Dal knew that students wanted to party, why not create a space to do this safely? It could be that schools want to ignore this more unflattering aspect of homecoming, but I feel it would be wiser to face it head on instead of having the embarrassment of having your students and school criticized across the province.
In an article from 2017, another year that saw Dal students crowding the streets around campus to party, Mike Sampson, a SMU student living down the street from a large group of Dal students, said "From what I could tell ... they were looking for that sense of community," Sampson said. "To all hang out, have a few drinks with friends and have that party. Dalhousie wasn't providing them with that so ... someone just said ‘Lets take over Jennings Street.’". With no other homecoming event on campus to move on to, everyone stalled on Jennings and the adjoining streets. This statement shows that with these parties, students just want to bond with their peers and to make a leap into the large community that Dal provides, but what Dal did not provide was a safe space for students to have that.
While I cannot personally say I know the extent to which SMUdents and alumni participated in the Homecoming tradition of huge parties, it can safely be said that it was nowhere near the size of Dal’s. In an article published the week between Dal and SMU’s homecoming, Franklyn Southwell, the president of the Saint Mary's University Students Association, said he hoped there would be no problems and that students and alumni would adhere to the COVID-19 regulations while still participating in campus activities.
Homecoming traditions have certainly changed over the years, such as St. F.X. changing the featured game from men’s football to women’s rugby, events becoming more diverse and inclusive, and schools coming down on things like hazing and traditions that were deemed sexist or classist. Some things never change, however, such as the importance of sports during a school’s homecoming. Homecoming should be seen as a time to celebrate and be proud of your school, and gives a great opportunity for alumni to come home, as it were, to see their legacy continued by the current students.