An Embarrassing Homecoming Pep Rally For Northwestern

If there's a pep rally the night before the Homecoming game, but no students attend, did it actually happen?

Oh, the band was there; so were the cheerleaders and some unlucky football players. But besides that, I'm pretty sure I could count the students at tonight's pep rally on one hand.

Freshman offensive lineman Brian Smith told the Northwestern News Network that he was confused about why there weren't any students at the pep rally.

Welcome to Northwestern Brian, hope you don't transfer.

Don't get me wrong, the pep rally was packed...with alumni. That is one aspect of Homecoming, a chance for the alums to relive their glory years at college. But if tonight's student attendance was any indicator, the alums should have stayed home and studied.

A number of things were executed terribly by the NU administration. First and foremost, they didn't advertise the pep rally via email until...3:28 a.m. Friday morning.

I don't know about my other NU students, but I wasn't checking my email at that time, and I didn't even wake up on Friday until noon after a fun Thursday night out. By that time, I had a bunch of other emails to look at.

Secondly, they held the pep rally in a terrible location. Deering Meadow (Field?) doesn't have much lighting, and isn't close to north campus, which is where most of the sports fans at NU reside. A pep rally is supposed to be fun, instead it was dark and depressing.

Unfortunately, the weather was also miserable, but a better planned pep rally would have moved indoors, (maybe Patten Gym?) with plenty of notice, which would have made it a lot better experience for everyone. Instead, people had to navigate around a bunch of awful, disgusting muddy areas just to get to their seats.

Most of the students who DO have NU spirit couldn't attend the pep rally because they were too busy getting their floats ready for the parade that immediately followed.

I feel the parade was a much better experience for everyone. But at the same time I was disappointed in some of the floats for espousing POLITICAL MESSAGES of all things on Homecoming weekend.

Are you kidding me? Get over yourselves NU students.

One float was entirely devoted to environmentalism. Another float featured the students inexplicably yelling "Make Love, Not War." No matter how you feel about those issues, (and the second one makes no sense at all) they have no place on Homecoming weekend. You're supposed to be all about school spirit, not spreading your views to unassuming people just looking to watch a fun parade.

So the pep rally was an epic fail despite the best efforts of a fired up Coach Fitzgerald. The parade was a bit more successful, despite some trouble-making students. But in the end, this most recent edition of Homecoming weekend shows NU still has a lot of growing up to do to even come close to the big boys in the Big Ten when it comes to school spirit.

All I know is that they sure as hell need to win tomorrow.