Hollywood has given moviegoers a sense of what Homecoming should be. Whether it involves Peter Parker getting grilled by his date’s villainous father while being chauffeured to the big dance in “Spiderman: Homecoming” or Wendy Wu campaigning to become Homecoming Queen in “Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior,” films give us expectations about this uniquely American phenomenon.
“We saw it a lot in movies when we were growing up,” said Mariana Torres, a recent transfer student to WNMU from Universidad de Sonora, “so we had a bit of knowledge about what Homecoming was about.” For Torres, this fall’s Homecoming at WNMU was the first she has experienced in person. She said her expectations about it came primarily from one source: “Disney Channel,” she explained with a laugh.
Torres’ fellow student Beatriz Olivas feels the same. “I did know about it but have never experienced it,” she said.
Torres and Olivas are in the same position that two other transfer students from Sonora were in two years ago. When Rita Paulina Escalante and Rebeca Portillo Parra arrived on campus in the fall of 2021, the university was still recovering from the COVID-19 shutdown and trying to revive the Homecoming tradition after a year of social-distancing and doing things remotely.
“We were just coming out of COVID,” said Escalante, “and I was expecting so much more about [Homecoming] . . . I was expecting something different.”
Portillo was also surprised by the limited activities during her first year on campus. “The first [Homecoming] was weird, because we had just come out of [the worst of] COVID, and we did not have anything planned. We thought there would be a dance,” said Portillo, citing one of the mainstays of Hollywood’s depiction of Homecoming festivities. She said that the stereotypical idea of homecoming portrayed by the film and television industry skewed her expectations of what Homecoming would involve.
Escalante and Portillo’s surprise at that first Homecoming turned into a determination to get involved. Now first-year MBA students, they both worked with Student Life to plan this year’s celebration. Many of the events that were part of Homecoming this year are unlikely to be depicted in any Hollywood version of Homecoming, including a “Chopped Up Challenge,” in which students showed off their culinary skills in a contest modeled on the reality-based television game show, “Chopped,” and a casual get-together that allowed parade participants to work together to get their float ready for the parade.
Both Escalante and Portillo said that they are most excited about this year’s parade. The parade proceeded through Silver City on Broadway, Bullard Street and College Avenue. “We have a lot of floats that are participating,” said Escalante prior to the parade, “so I believe it is going to be very fun.” She estimated that there were over twenty floats involved.
The football game this year was preceded by a tailgating event, and Torres, Olivas, Escalante and Portillo all participated through the International Student Association (ISA). “We [Portillo and Escalante] are both presidents of the ISA, and we will be selling Mexican snacks that we brought from Mexico this [past] weekend,” explained Portillo in advance of tailgating. The proceeds from the sale will be used to fund the activities of the ISA this year.
While Hollywood may sell us tired tropes of what a Homecoming celebration should be, these four students from Sonora are getting a true sense of this very American tradition—by helping to shape it themselves at WNMU.