Cedarville Welcomes Alumni and Family to Campus to Celebrate Cedarville

By Zach Krauss

This year, event services is expecting nearly 2,500 alumni and family members for Homecoming and Parents Weekend on October 5th and 6th.

Homecoming and Parents Weekend has been a tradition at Cedarville for many years, and each year, Alumni and Parent Relations strives to make the experience the best that it can be for all the guests on campus.

Dan Case, assistant director of homecoming and alumni programming, said that one of the things he’s emphasizing the most in planning this event are the little things that the guests might not think about. He wants people to have things that they might have forgotten at home right at their fingertips, and he wants parking and directions to be easy and understandable.

“I want people to be able to drive onto campus and the weekend to just be coming back home, seeing classmates; seeing friends,” Case said. “I’ve been given a lot of freedom to make those little changes and that’s what I’m excited about.”

In recent years, Homecoming Weekend has been prefaced by Homecoming Week, which functions as a sort of ‘spirit week’ for the students on campus so that they know the weekend is about celebrating Cedarville, not just the alumni.

Last year, Homecoming Week included events like Twin Tuesday and Wedding Wednesday, in which students dressed up and got to participated in a social media contest in order to win prizes and compete against each other. This year, a similar competition will be going on for homecoming week, in which entire halls of students will be working together in order to win the most points from each day of the week, with the winner earning $500 for their hall to spend.

Delta Alpha Epsilon (DAE) is a student organization representing Alumni Relations for Cedarville. The org is made up of juniors and seniors who are all passionate about serving campus by interacting with alumni. Kenny Coppens, senior mechanical engineering major and member of DAE, said he’s extremely excited to get to see and hear the responses of the alumni after Homecoming Weekend is over.

“We often get emails telling us how some little thing made all the difference,” Coppens said. “Those things are what makes it all so worth it!”

The nomination of Mr. and Ms. Cedarville is another integral part of the students’ experience of Homecoming. Each year, the student body gets to nominate one male and one female student from their class who they think best represents the student body in a way that exemplifies Cedarville’s core values.

After the 8 nominees are selected, two from each class, voting takes place and the student body gets to select which two of those students gets to claim the title of Mr. and Ms. Cedarville. These students then become integral to the events of Homecoming weekend, attending the Homecoming parade, the Legacy banquet, and also participating in the marketing and social media campaigns for the weekend itself.

Clara Costello, senior communication major and SGA Vice President, gets the opportunity of heading up the nomination and selection of the Mr. and Ms. Cedarville candidates for this year. As a previous member of DAE, she knows well the work that goes into Homecoming and shares a passion for the alumni and the school they’re returning to.

“I’m so excited to be able to highlight and love on students who are serving, living, and loving well behind the scenes,” Costello said. “It’s an excellent opportunity to us to celebrate campus culture, to welcome alumni back, and to just have a great time together, and I would highly encourage all students to come out to be invested in Homecoming weekend and to use those opportunities to build memories with people around them.”

Zach Krauss is a senior pharmacy/music double major from central Texas and campus reporter for Cedars. He loves music, theatre, biology, community, and meeting new people.