Homecoming events well received

Missouri Southern homecoming queen Ashley Hendrix is one of 34 students set to graduate with honors Saturday.

Missouri Southern homecoming queen Ashley Hendrix is one of 34 students set to graduate with honors Saturday.

The closing of Missouri Southern’s Homecoming ’06 marks the end of another apparently successful week of fun for those working in the Student Activities Office.

The “Start Your Engines!” theme, in full swing from Oct. 9-14, lent itself to activities such as caricature hats, racing frames and trucker hats as well as a paint-your-own soap box derby.

Other activities included an outdoor movie, all-campus picnic and the voting for, and coronation of, Homecoming royalty.

“We’ve heard a lot of positive comments,” said Tori Christensen, director of student activities.

The Student Activities Office also put on an all-campus Block Party that included a “Full Throttle” concert, however weather limited the concert’s success.

“It was a whole lot of fun but it was extremely freezing,” Christensen said. “We did have a pretty good turnout for what the temperature was.”

Christensen was also pleased with the variety of activities available.

“I think it went off very well on both the student aspect and the alumni aspect,” she said. Christensen also said this year’s Homecoming was improved by the level of spirit felt around campus.

“The incoming freshman seem to be pretty energetic and really just all about Southern,” she said.

Thought the student activities office is a major contributor to the Homecoming production Melanie Epperson, secretary for student activities, attributed this year’s success to the collaboration of campus organizations as well as the high level of departmental involvement.

“We had a lot of departments on campus involved and everybody worked together,” Epperson said. “I think it was spread out pretty well, not one department did everything so I think that was kind of nice that there was a lot going on everywhere and a lot of people helping.”

The Student Activities Office, in coordination with the Alumni Association and others, plans a full week of activities, though many students are only present for major events such as the all-campus picnic and coronation where The Alumni Associations Ashley Hendrix and Sigma Pi’s Jeremy Cupp were crowned Homecoming royalty.

“Most students will come to one or two things,” Epperson said, “but we’ve got things going on all the time.”

However, this year saw a good turnout for almost every scheduled event and some events even being surprisingly large successes.

“The trucker hats, [students] went crazy,” Epperson said.

The paint your own soap-box derby was also a reported hit.

However most of the students who attend one of the many events will never see the effort that goes into creating the all-campus picnic or the soapbox derby.

“We start planning months ahead of time,” Epperson said.