 "Photo: Kristen Landgrebe / DFP STAFF")
Wielding power tools, banging hammers and splashing paint, several hundred students pulled an all-nighter Friday at The Armory to construct floats for Saturday morning’s Homecoming Parade.
Seventeen student groups scurried to transform Mac truck flatbeds and golf carts into a full-scale Homecoming Parade fit for Commonwealth Avenue viewing in just nine hours.
For some floatbuilders, carving backdrops out of plywood and painting over cotton tarps made the all-night affair an exercise in resourcefulness.
“The biggest problem is constructing a float stable enough so that it won’t topple over during its trip,” said Mindy Stroh, coordinator of programs for the Student Activities Office, which sponsored the float building.
However, even with the long hours of work and complications, most students used the process as a way to drum up school spirit.
“I wanted to help create and boost community spirit and to show that CGS cares about and is proud of our school,” said College of General Studies sophomore Kirsten Lundeen, who helped assemble the CGS Government float. “It’s been a lot of fun. Even though I might be here till four in the morning, this will all be worth it when we’re going down Comm. Ave. tomorrow.”
College of Communication freshman Julie George echoed Lundeen’s sentiments, saying the project was a social outing.
“I’m a freshman. I wanted to find something that I could become involved in immediately,” George said. “This lets me be creative and meet people. I like it.”
Groups faced a lack of materials and found it hard to keep with original design plans.
“We had to totally change our design. You have to be open to improvisation,” George said. “You have a picture of how the float is going to look in your head, but by the end of the night it’s going to wind up looking completely different.”
Certain groups were driven to keep their plans a secret before their unveiling the next morning.
The College of Engineering camp, which had an intricate space-themed float of physics formulas, refused to divulge float plans.
Each group submitted a detailed drawing and explanation of their float design to the Student Activities Office, which then chose 10 groups to construct large floats, and seven more to decorate golf cart mini-floats. Groups paid a $500 entry fee for truck floats, and a $100 fee for golf carts.
After submitting purchase orders to the SAO for float supplies, the SAO solicited trucks and golf carts, as well as supplies such as lumber, paint, chicken wire, nails, paint brushes and tools.
“We paid about $20,000 up front for the supplies, but some of that is reimbursed to us by the groups,” Stroh said, adding that the groups usually reimburse half of what is allotted to them.
“SAO really tries to make this as affordable for the groups as we can,” Stroh said.
And even though floats are an essential part of any parade, float construction coordinators said that recruiting workers was still difficult.
“We had trouble publicizing and getting people to show up,” said Samantha Olaya, a College of General Studies sophomore working on the CGS Government float. “Right now we only have three people here.”
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