A look back at homecoming traditions at SU

With Homecoming weekend of 2024 coming to a close, the Southwestern community is still buzzing with excitement from football, tailgating, alumni visits, and various special events on the lawn and across campus. Southwestern has long held the proud (and bold!) claim that the first ever college homecoming was held on our campus, so it’s only fair that homecoming holds a special place in our hearts. Let us now look back on SU homecoming traditions of the past and present as we reflect on its significance to our community!

The title of the first ever homecoming event is disputed–the University of Missouri asserts that their 1911 event was the first of its kind, while Baylor University hosted a “Home-Coming Weekend” in 1909 and Northern Illinois University claims to have held a homecoming as early as 1906 (although they did not play their first intercollegiate homecoming football game until 1914). However, anyone at Southwestern University will proudly tell you that our very first Homecoming Weekend, hosted in April of 1909, was the first of its kind, sparking a tradition that is now dear to college campuses across the nation. 

Southwestern’s first Homecoming Weekend was a resounding success; a 1909 edition of The Megaphone referred to it as “beyond any doubt the greatest day known in the history of any educational institution in the State,” while Early Price (SU class of 1908) wrote a letter to an alumnus friend of hers describing the event with much excitement and fondness: “There was so much merriment and celebration. The entire town was draped with ‘Welcome’ banners in Southwestern’s colors. Everywhere you went, there were greetings between long-lost friends and well-wishers exchanging news of their lives since leaving school.”

Some of the traditions still held today are rooted in that first Homecoming 115 years ago: current students will recognize accounts of a large meal on the lawn shared by current students and alumni (although at the first Homecoming, students prepared the barbecue meal and members of the senior class waited tables), as well as various small reunions of different organizations across campus, special performances just for Homecoming Weekend, and of course, a football game. Other accounts might sound a little more foreign, however: one particular tradition involved a team of “old-timers” playing football against the current SU football team, and multiple accounts indicate that the majority of the Georgetown population, whether or not they were associated with the university, were involved with the event in some capacity. Storefronts displayed banners in Southwestern colors and local businesses donated food and supplies to the event; special thanks were extended to the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Works of Waco, which donated 1200 bottles of Dr. Pepper. 

As Southwestern and Georgetown have grown and changed throughout the years, Homecoming traditions have shifted alongside them. Throughout the mid-1900s, Southwestern held parades throughout Georgetown, with floats made by students (including a particularly popular float in the 1966 Homecoming Parade modeled after Charlie Brown’s Great Pumpkin). The first account of a Southwestern Homecoming Parade appeared in a 1939 edition of The Megaphone, which notes that that year’s homecoming was a celebration of Southwestern’s 100th year. The first parade marched down Main Street with 50 floats accompanied by bands from Granger, Temple, Taylor, and Georgetown; the best float won a large golden cup. Despite the apparent excitement surrounding the parades, however, this tradition seems to have fizzled out over the years. The most recent account of a parade is in a 1984 edition of The Megaphone, which details a Zeta Tau Alpha float full of southern belles, a synchronized lawn mower brigade headed by Pi Kappa Alphas, and a group of Kappa Sigmas in drag. Perhaps the coming years could see a resurgence of this particularly chaotic and fun Homecoming tradition.

From student-run meals to football games against alumni to parades, and now more modern events like tailgating, Drag Bingo, and movies on the lawn, Southwestern has long held pride and joy in its Homecoming traditions and connections between current students, alumni, and our beloved Georgetown. As Early Price stated in that letter detailing the very first Homecoming weekend, “I shall remember [it] forever. We have all been so close – Georgetown and Southwestern, its students and the town, our lives so entwined for all these many years. I doubt there is another place like it anywhere.”