Oklahoma State Homecoming, one of the largest homecoming traditions in the nation, is the week at Oklahoma State that makes all students and alumni proud to be Cowboys! The Homecoming events start the weekend before with the Greek Football Frenzy tournament when each Greek pairing participates in flag football games to raise overall points for Sweepstakes in Frenzy and Spirit categories. Next there is Harvest Carnival and Chili Cook-off where greek houses, student organizations and
life groups create carnival games and signature chili to raise cans and provide funds for the food pantry and local children.
Thursday night is All-Night Pomp. Each Greek pairing stays up all night pomping, drinking energy drinks, fighting through exhaustion to create the one-of-a-kind House decks that everyone is used to seeing at walkarounds on Friday. Throughout the night, inside crews finish the last of the screens to go on the deck while the outside crew works quickly to hang screens on the metal framework finished before.
After all-night pomp, each house deck must be finished by 5:00 p.m. on Friday so the judges can walk around. Each deck has a various number of moving parts, engineered by fraternity members, varying in size and caliber depending on the each chapter. From 5:00 p.m.. to 9:00 p.m., the streets around University are closed to cars and overflowing with people, walking around trying to decide which pairing will end up with the coveted winning house deck title. It is one of the greatest sights to see for OSU’s Homecoming.
Saturday morning presents the Oklahoma State University’s Homecoming parade. It begins with the OSU band and includes floats from student organizations and Residential Life, Homecoming royalty, and important people and organizations from around Stillwater and Oklahoma. It is truly the Sea of Orange.
After the parade, Homecoming is not quite over. At half time of the Homecoming game, the winners in each category are announced. The winning house deck was a tie this year between Kappa Alpha Theta/Sigma Alpha Epsilon and Chi Omega/Sigma Phi Epsilon. The winning float in the parade went to Delta Tau Delta/Alpha Pi Omega/Sigma Lambda Gamma.
Oklahoma State University Homecoming 2011 was a success yet again. This year, my family friends from Louisiana State University attended. They were quite surprised by all of the festivities and the amount of orange covering the town. They truly enjoyed their complete Cowboy experience and they’ve become honorary OSU Cowboys for life!
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at OK State chapter.