There are a number of people out there happy to see last Friday come and go.

You see, for many, last week was a week of pure, unadulterated hell. A combination of the two extremes college students face - last week was both finals week and spring break, both unrestricted fun and excitement and burdensome labor, both midterms and Homecoming.

Forgive me for dredging up that word - Homecoming. Forgive me, because that collective sigh of relief breathed by the campus last week is matched only by the collective groan it elicits. Homecoming has a way of raising the hackles on much of campus.

Divide K-State into three parts.

Find the people who are ambivalent toward Homecoming. That's one group - the group that gets tired of hearing about it, tired of reading about it and simply doesn't care. Find the people who love Homecoming - that's another group - they defend it, participate in it and foam at the mouth to the accusation that perhaps Homecoming isn't all it's cracked up to be. Then there's the people who hate Homecoming with a passion - the ones who revile it for the attention it gets and the time it takes up.

The split is no different than any other issue, really. Our current practice of Homecoming is divisive. With divisive issues there is, erm ... division - the more relevant the issue is, the more difficult it is to ignore. Homecoming is darn difficult to ignore once it comes around. That, in and of itself, makes it a relevant issue.

Did you follow that?

Ahem.

Instead of helping make Homecoming a worthwhile event that everyone can enjoy, many declare it exclusionary, then proceed to reaffirm that feeling by bagging on its participants. In our divisive regard for the event we have marginalized parties and decided that the greek community is full of zealots.

I am an advocate of Homecoming with qualification - which means I think it has a great deal of untapped potential - but then I am also Greek, so there is a touch of bias. After all, I paid good money for my friends, and I should be protecting that investment, right? I by all means should don the same color jacket as everyone I know, get drunk enough to blow Project Wellness off the map, and try to shack as many drunk sorority women as possible.

Hmm. ...

That's probably not the purpose of Homecoming .

I think Homecoming is a terrific opportunity to reach out to alumni, to rejuvenate their interest in K-State and to give ourselves an idea of the heritage we carry by attending school here.

I think Homecoming is a terrific opportunity to reach out to members of our Manhattan community and to show them our appreciation for sharing their community.

I think Homecoming is a terrific opportunity to reach out to ourselves and celebrate K-State's achievements.

The effect of such an event should bring the constituency of K-State together - to add a touch of pride, perhaps improve our relationships with one another. Students should feel good about being here, they should feel as though they belong to something. This idyllic situation is not the current picture of Homecoming .

We simply do not consider cooperating enough to make Homecoming worthwhile. At the end of the spring semester, Homecoming was set to be this week - the week of the Colorado game apparent schedule conflicts forced a decision following last semester to move Homecoming week to the week of the Baylor game.

Such short notice made it nearly impossible to garner an effective turnout of alumni - there's no excuse for those empty seats at KSU stadium this weekend against Baylor. The Homecoming game should be absolutely packed with alumni.

The Homecoming competitions are such that none of the above objectives are met. Notice that the only activities that really embrace the community are the parade and paint it purple, where more than 3,000 hours of community service were racked up. Both events are fun and worthwhile independently of competition. The rest of the events are more cumbersome, less useful and less interesting. Early losses in these competitions encourage Homecoming participants to withdraw since it becomes impossible for them to win overall.

Why?

We have been blindly dedicated to a few Homecoming traditions for years. Now, since the bodybuilding competition was canceled because of liability, we have the opportunity to look at all of Homecoming critically. We have the chance to change Homecoming into something less centered on competition and more centered on alumni. Invite alumni guest speakers, have tours of alumni roving all week. Make the pep rally less about finding out who won the Homecoming competition and more about spirit. Get band members to wear their uniforms on a specific day during the week. Have the K-State Singers performing in the K-State Student Union. Give Willie the Wildcat free reign of the campus and the permission to burst into a few approved classrooms to lead the students in the fight song.

If Homecoming is going to be a campus-wide event, it must be centered on campus.

Period.

That is the only way to get every student involved. In order to do that, there must be cooperation from the faculty and administration. There must be support from K-State.

A few faculty members, for instance, specifically schedule tests on Homecoming week to assert a tenuous amount of control and influence over their students and - vicariously - the university. It's as if there is a desire to prove to Homecoming participants that their minds only should be on academics. Homecoming week fell on a critical week of pre-enrollment, and statistically, this time of the year is the most dense testing period of all. So, torn between responsibilities to myself and my classes and the university and my peers, there is a large part of me that is considering leaving school and not returning to higher education for some time. After all, Homecoming should be about cooperation and unity, and instead it embodies schism. The problem is not with the Alumni Association - the group that sponsors Homecoming - its Homecoming committee budget is practically too small to cover Ambassador elections, let alone bring the entire university together.

Should we keep Homecoming?

Although getting rid of the event entirely is a bit premature, we should keep it as long as we can muster enough interest out of K-State.

It wouldn't be the first time we lost Homecoming, after all.

If we can't get our act together, perhaps we don't deserve it.

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