The price of Bearcat pride

Homecoming is a time to show pride in the Bearcats, but that pride comes with a hefty price tag.

Showing Bearcat pride is something Northwest Greek Life takes very seriously. This is apparent in its preparation for homecoming.

"I pride the bond of our sisters during homecoming. We really stick together to get all the events done," Phi Mu President Robyn Thomas said.

Leading up to the final preview of Greek organizations' hard work takes much preparation. Not only do they need to find a place to work, they also have to find a place to do it, get a trailer, a driver, order pomps, get the backdrop built and much more. They also vote on a fraternity to team with. This all takes many months to complete, said Sigma Kappa President Sarah Simmelink.

"The average is probably 3,000 hours. That's with skit and everything else for homecoming," Simmelink said.

The standard hours spent working on floats for Sigma Kappa is 10 hours per week for sophomore and juniors. The freshmen have been working on six hours per week along with the seniors. There are two closed weekends that everyone has to attend and those contain 10 hours, Simmelink said.

The Phi Mu girls work about four hours per week, Phi Mu Homecoming Chair Gloria Carpio said. The hours are never more than six per week. The first week was eight hours, but they have been decreasing since the first week, Carpio said.

While spending time is a huge aspect of homecoming, the money that goes into these floats is also costly.

"I would say we spend...on average of $3,000…it's really expensive," Simmelink said.

The pomps run about $3 per bag, and there are 300 sheets per bag. Sigma Kappa has a double pomped float so it gets about 150 pomps out of each bag, Simmelink said. The Sigma Kappas spent approximately $2,500 on pomps.

"We (Phi Mu) probably spent around $1,000 or $1,100 on pomps." Carpio said. "The price is pretty much the same every year … depending on the theme and what is in stock."

The costs of floats are divided up equally between both the sorority and fraternities.

Be the first to comment on this article!

Add comment


I am not posting spam. I understand posting spam or other comments that are unrelated to this article will cause my comment to be flagged for deletion and possibly cause my IP address to be permanently banned from this server.

Enter the characters in the image above:

log out