It is homecoming time on Rocky Top. With this comes tons of fun activities including a bonfire, relay races, a parade and more — all to see who will reign victorious this year.
One of the most important parts of homecoming is organizations partnering with one another to collaborate throughout the week in attempts to bring the homecoming trophy home to their respective organizations.
This is a very highly anticipated part of homecoming in the spring for Greek Life. Generally, an interfraternity council fraternity proposes to one of the panhellenic sororities the spring before that year’s homecoming to solidify the partnership and they begin planning all the festivities surrounding the week.
For example, this year Alpha Omicron Pi, or AOPi, is partnered with Lambda Chi Alpha, commonly known as Lambda. Last spring, Lambda developed a proposal for AOPi that won them over, and now they will be participating in each homecoming event together.
These events include a yard sign as well as a large float for the parade, both created from pomping. Pomping is when the organizations take tissue paper to fold it into balls that are then glued on the design’s foundation creating unique artwork to be portrayed to the judges.
These are the two largest events that the organizations work on together in hopes to win the individual prizes and get extra points toward their final score in hopes that they will become the 2024 champions of homecoming.
“Being proposed to is really fun and exciting. When we were proposed to by Lambda they surprised us by coming to the house and singing a song. Being proposed to gets our chapter excited for homecoming. It’s also fun to try and guess what each fraternity will do as their proposal,” Meg Welty, a sophomore food science student, said.
The process behind asking a sorority begins within each fraternity. They decide who they would like to propose to and then decide how they are going to propose. Commonly, the fraternity creates a dance, delivers gifts or brings flowers to the sorority of their choice. Further, some fraternities will also provide details of various events or mixers that they will hold with their partner sorority throughout the week to entice them to vote for them.
“The process of asking a sorority to homecoming is one of the most exciting times of the fraternity calendar. It can turn into a creative competition when more than one fraternity is asking a sorority. Whether it involves choreographing a skit or buying flowers and candy for the sorority, it usually gets intense. We want to make homecoming as special as possible, so it takes effort on the front end in ways like proposals to make that happen,” Sam Mefford, a sophomore business and pre-dental student, said.
More than one fraternity can ask a sorority, and if that is the case, then the sorority will vote on who they would like to partner with for that particular year. That being said, the fraternities can also propose to more than one sorority in case one decides to choose a different fraternity for that year’s homecoming cycle.
“Homecoming is such a fun time at the University of Tennessee. The proposals are the most fun because the guys all try their hardest to get picked by us. They give us free food and will usually come sing and dance for us in hopes to win over our vote. Proposals are important for homecoming because it is a time when sororities and fraternities can come together and make homecoming week a blast,” Kristin Bradbury, a sophomore supply chain management student, said.
A fraternity can only partner with the same sorority every four years to ensure that all the members of each are branching out and creating relationships with other fraternities and sororities during their time on campus.
These partnerships are a great way to create bonds with other organizations and make friends in other Greek organizations by spending a whole week working together to produce large scale projects and competing in the various events with one another.
Be on the lookout for all the organizations’ yard signs in Fraternity Park, and attend the homecoming parade to see what each of the partnerships decided to fabricate for Homecoming 2024 on Rocky Top.
