Tent City premieres during Homecoming

Students and faculty at GCSU have been working to steadily improve Homecoming events and to create a stronger sense of community. To help promote campus organizations to get more involved in Homecoming, Director of Campus Life Tom Miles conceived a plan to create an environment where students, faculty, alumni and community members could meet during Homecoming weekend to support GCSU. His idea was to set up a “tent city” in between the residence halls with campus groups each having a tent to call their own where they could talk to Homecoming participants about what their organization does.

Twenty-four groups responded by signing up for a space and every group made it to the event. Groups included school departments, religious groups, fraternities, sororities, GCSU Physical Plant staff, the Thunder Crew, environmental science club and alumni relations.

Student groups could reserve a space and set up their own tent at no charge, however Student Government Association would like to see more students rent a large tent next year through the school to have matching tents.

“We’re hoping that some groups will see how convenient it was that the tents were set up so they will come through us instead so it will be a little more uniform,” SGA Secretary Claire Cantrell said.

Tent City was located near the beginning and end of the Homecoming Parade, adjacent to the Centennial Center. The parade left behind a trail of beads and candy when it passed Tent City on Greene Street and in the Centennial Center parking lot.

“We will have people going back behind the parade and picking all that stuff up. In the future we may look at less things being thrown out and just building the energy inside the parade in a different manner,” SGA President Zach Mullins said. “At the first tailgate event the grounds crew reported that we had the smallest amount of trash after the tailgate they had ever seen after an event held at Centennial (Center). So hopefully that tradition will carry over to today and we won’t have that much trash to deal with.”

Tent City’s creator Tom Miles considers it a success .

“A number of groups have come to me and said ‘Now that I’m here and I can see it I can conceptualize what you’re trying to do and next year we’re going to get a big tent.’ My next effort is in them inviting their alums back; because more than anything Tent City is an opportunity for us to have a true Homecoming where people who went to school here come back,” Miles said. “All the things that people were concerned about just didn’t happen. It was a great event. Everybody was having a good time.”

Posted by Drake Simons on Feb 26 2010. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry