Hamline’s homecoming was planned by a special homecoming committee for the third year.

Lacey Squier, Assistant Director of Student Activities and Leadership Development, knew that with students displaying more inclination to participate, the planning of Homecoming week was not within Hamline University Planning Board’s (HUPB) scope.

“At that time, our perception was that interest in Homecoming was growing, and they had reached their capacity,” Squier said.

Squier pointed out that HUPB still has meaningful contributions to Homecoming programming and activities, but that the students assigned to plan Homecoming specifically took over the larger responsibilities of the week.

The makeup of the students planning homecoming has changed every year since 2016, ranging from being a student organization, to student employees and to volunteers.

“This year I kind of merged homecoming planning with the student leaders of the office,” Squier said.

Homecoming often falls on National Coming Out Week, a fact Squier is mindful of when planning events, especially on National Coming Out Day, Thursday Oct. 11. Spectrum, Hamline’s LGBTQIA awareness group, is planning a Coming Out Day Photo Booth on Oct. 11. It appears in the Homecoming events section of the Hamline Planner.

“We wanted to endorse, support and encourage [Coming Out Day],” Squier said.

Hamline celebrated its Coming Out Week the first week of October.

Senior Cameron Lindquist, Royalty Coordinator, is one of the seven planners. Lindquist has been a part of Homecoming planning for all three years that it has been under Squier’s leadership. He was involved in HUPB as a first-year student when Squier announced that Homecoming would be planned by a seperate group.

“I was like ‘I want to do that,’” Lindquist said. “I love HUPB. I love homecoming. I love planning stuff.”

Hamline had not elected Homecoming royalty for seven years before the committee was organized. The new committee made deliberate choices in how they were going to organize the process.

“Seven years ago it was the traditional king and queen popularity contest,”  Lindquist said, “which is why when we brought it back, we made very careful decisions to not make it a popularity contest or a show of heteronormativity.”

The committee chose ten Homecoming Court members from the 87 nominations it received this year based on piper-pride, role-model behavior and diverse life experiences.

Senior Liz Ronald is also on the committee, planning the Lip Sync competition.

“It’s a really cool way to let people get kind of silly,” Ronald said.

Faculty will judge students’ 10 to 15 minute performances as they lip-sync to a song of their choice on their own or with a group,and give three performance groups the honors of first, second and third place.

The Homecoming Dance will happen directly after the Lip Sync competition for the first time this year.

“The annual Lip-Syncing Competition is a pretty well-loved event,”  Squier said, “and we’ll get a couple hundred people to the Anderson Center to see their friends. It’s really fun.”

Squier observed that students were sticking around after the competition last year.

“We just went, ‘wow, wouldn’t it be fun and really suit the energy straight from this, people went to a dance?’” Squier said, “so we’re experimenting with that.”

Students around campus do not know much about homecoming but are excited for it nonetheless.

Junior Hannah Mayhew said, “Just because I don’t know anything about it doesn’t mean I don’t want to participate.”

See the rest of the week’s events at www.hamline.edu/homecoming.