Year after year, the SEMO community gathers to kick off Homecoming by watching the parade drive down Broadway. Students and community members enjoy the parade, but how the floats reach this point rarely crosses people’s minds.
The pomping process
During homecoming, the fraternities and sororities pair up and are pitted against each other in a friendly competition within Greek life. As part of their competition, every pairing is responsible for building a float for the annual parade. Fortunately for the Southeast community, Greek life gives an extreme amount of respect and effort to this event.
About a month before Homecoming day, the Homecoming chairs for each fraternity and sorority learn the theme and start preparing. As soon as each pairing chooses their float theme, the pomping process begins in full force.
Pomps are pieces of tissue paper, either rolled around a marker or into a ball, then glued to wooden boards to create designs. Those wooden boards are attached to a trailer the night before the Homecoming parade to create the float.
Because the timeframe to complete each float is only about a month, pairings must begin working on their floats as soon as they possibly can. Fully pomping a float takes an immense amount of consistent effort from an entire pairing, so it is an all-hands-on-deck situation from the time they start to the minute the parade starts.
Every chapter prepares for Homecoming differently, but many chapters assign a certain number of hours that members are expected to pomp each week based on grade level. This way each member is held accountable and equally contributes to the massive project.
Many chapters use a mix of painting and pomping to bring their design to life, but they primarily use pomp on their boards to maintain the homecoming traditions of their chapter. Due to the complex designs on each float, pomping becomes a practice of perfection. If one pomp looks crumpled or incorrectly placed, the entire section is pulled up to redo. The tissue paper used is so fragile that many pomps are ruined when the board is done, and whole sections must be torn up and completely repomped.
On Homecoming Eve, every student in Greek life gathers to place the final touches on their floats. The chapters bring all their materials to a build site and start attaching everything to their floats. The pairings stay as late as they have to, hours after midnight, making sure their vision comes to life before they deliver their float the next morning.
Pomping pride
This is the second Homecoming I have experienced, so I can say firsthand that the popping process is not fun. Every year I dread pomping for hours on end and could not complain more if I tried, but it could not be more worth the end result. This year, my chapter was lucky enough to finish building our float early and leave at midnight with our float completed. The moment I took a step back to see our finished product, the overwhelming feeling of pride took over. All of the work, effort and time is a tangible representation of our sisterhood.
Pomping season evokes mixed emotions for many sororities and fraternities, as pomping is an extremely tedious and time-consuming process, but watching their float drive by in the parade is worth the hassle.
