There are three words that are both dreaded and celebrated in the Greek community at Oklahoma State University. All night pomp.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with all night pomp, I’ll give you a brief history. OSU puts on what is nationally known as America’s Greatest Homecoming Celebration. A big part of making that happen is attributed to the house decorations the Greek chapters create. House decorations began in the 1920s when Greek houses began decorating their doors. Since then the tradition has grown and evolved quite a bit.
Now this long-standing tradition has become a competition. Each year a different sorority and fraternity pair up to create a house deck. To say these house decks are big would be an understatement. They are gigantic, enormous, huge. To help paint that mental picture in your head, let’s just say the entire display hides the fraternity house behind it.
As far as the construction of these house decks go, the guys spend most of their time in the front yard welding the structure for the pomping screens to be displayed on. What are pomping screens you might ask? Pomping screens are big screens of chicken wire. Participants stuff varying colors of tissue paper into each hole according to a grid. This is what the women dedicate most of there time to doing.
Now I could go into the nitty gritty of how developing these house decks works, but that would probably bore you (if you aren’t already). But now that I’ve gotten that history lesson out of the way, I can better tell the story of all night pomp.
All night pomp happens the Thursday night before homecoming, and participants literally pomp all night long. Some are lucky and get to pomp last minute screens inside, but for the most part participants are stuck outside pomping the 3D screens and putting the deck into place. As a sophomore, I have had the experience of already participating in one all night pomp. Last year it was freezing cold and rainy! I never thought my fingers would hurt so bad to bend, but picking up tissue paper with gloves on is pretty much impossible, leaving my poor fingers to fend for themselves. Unfortunately, the weather looks to be the same for this years all night pomp too.
Depending on how far ahead or behind your house is determines the time you get to leave. Last year I was able to leave for my first class on Friday morning, but I know that in past years sometimes pomping continues well into Friday afternoon before judging begins. If you choose to focus on these things, not to mention being sleep deprived, then all night pomp can be a very negative experience.
However, all night pomp is also a unique experience, and Greek members only have four years to partake in it! Homecoming directors understand that by 2 am most of us are delirious and out of energy. The random dance parties to blaring music, frat laps where we walk around with our pledge class to check out the other houses decks, free energy drinks and snacks and drawings for prizes all make it fun and well, bearable to say the least.
Fortunately, my Greek chapter won first place in house deck my freshman year. That definitely made all those weeks of pomping worth it too!
Just remember, if you see somebody in your class Friday morning covered in pomping glue, hasn’t brushed their hair and has huge dark circles under their eyes, it is pretty safe to assume they’ve been awake all night pomping outside. And if you haven’t seen the house decks at Walkaround on Friday night or experienced the nations greatest homecoming you should. It is really quite a sight to see when you are packed together with more than 80,000 alumni and friends.