Crowd assembles for homecoming parade

Richard Kelly

Fraternities, sororities and political campaigns were among the groups that created floats and were on hand Saturday morning for the annual Homecoming Parade. People lined the streets to witness the floats as they passed.

Among the other groups on hand were the Washburn Student Social Work Association, the Lynn Jenkins Campaign, Sigma Alpha Iota, Alpha Delta, and even Washburn president Jerry Farley, who had his own place in the event.

The floats began their trek around 10:15 a.m., as the bright morning sun shone down on the float members and onlookers. The floats began in the KTWU parking lot and made their way around the entire campus. After heading north on MacVicar, the floats headed east down 17th street, before turning south on Washburn Avenue, and then heading back to the KTWU lot. Many floats were festively designed and organized to promote their organization or group, with the hope of recruiting people to join.”We have 21 members right now and we have a great freshmen class coming in and our hope is to have a lot of girls get involved with us because of that,” said Anna Reb, member of Sigma Alpha Iota.

Themes ran abundant throughout the different designs and ideas of the floats, ranging from simple signs on the automobiles in the events, to creative and festive ideas that took possibly weeks to create in full. Alpha Delta and Alpha Beta decided on the idea of “Little Shop Of Horrors” for their theme. It was an idea that came together just recently.

“I haven’t been to bed for three days,” said Matt Moxter, member of the Alpha Delta fraternity. “We originally started about a week ago, but we scrapped that idea, and now we’ve been working for the past few days straight to get this done.”

With hundreds of people watching, the Homecoming Parade went through the area around Washburn throwing candy to bystanders and giving those watching a good reason to stay to see the whole event. Smiles lined the streets, and all the onlookers appeared to enjoy the show. As it came to an end, the leftover candy didn’t go untaken and for the parade of happy faces, it left a sweet taste in the mouth of all who attended.

For winners of Homecoming events, check out the Washburn Review online at www.washburnreview.org.