Homecoming parade highlights traditions

Political campaigns, pockets of families, packs of students and pools of alumni speckled the campus community Friday for a parade of community politics and a spirited Hoosier pep rally. \nIU's 2004 Homecoming celebration, "The Legend of Old IU," sponsored by the IU Alumni Association and the IU Student Alumni Association provided students, faculty, alumni, Bloomington residents and guests the opportunity to feast on the visual spectacle of people represented as symbols for some organization, political ideology or community idea during the parade. \nDragging in the mud from five straight loses, the IU football team relished in the support of the campus community to help derive the courage to conquer the visiting Minnesota Golden Gophers.\nDecorated alongside the crumbled and decaying yellow and brown leaves sprinkled atop the cemented and paved landscape marking the parade route, thousands of campus community members observed the Homecoming pageantry seated on blankets and on limestone walls, from the comfort of front-yard couches and from the vantage point of parental shoulders.\nFollowing police car sirens, the IU Marching Hundred led the peaceful parade procession to the tune of IU's fight song, "Indiana, Our Indiana," among a handful of other recognized campus favorites. \nSophomore Kendra Dorey, a sousaphone performer in the fall and soon-to-be trumpeter for the basketball band, said it's a lot of fun getting everyone pepped up before, during and after the game.\n"At the beginning of the year, I was struggling," Dorey said Friday night under the glow of generator lights. "You have to march, so you don't bounce around. It's a lot more fun than it is work. In my opinion, it's a good time. Hopefully, we will help out the team a little."\nAfter the Marching Hundred progressed peacefully by, the length of the parade route was consumed by moments of political chaos, student organization pride and community awareness campaigns. Highlighted by Shriners wearing red hats and driving many different "floats" -- such as race cars, motorcycles and dune buggies -- the parade scene mirrored a family gathering of giggles and laughter. \nGuided by three Hoosier Olympians: Cassandra Cardinell, Rose Richmond and Vasili Spanos, acting as the parade Grand Marshals, "floats" consisted of everything from one carrying the Pizza Express guy to a car containing Interim IU-Bloomington Chancellor Ken Gros Louis; from the Singing Hoosiers serenading the crowd with the IU fight song to a man driving a black BMW costumed in a black suit, using his "float" as an advertising tool in support of "Bush-Cheney 2004."\nIU President Adam Herbert floated by the crowd in a Cinderella-esque white carriage drawn by white horses.\n"My two favorite words: 'Go Hoosiers,'" Herbert said while waving his arms to the crowd. "Let's try that. Go Hoosiers. I can't hear you. Let's try it again. Go Hoosiers." \nDespite the perception of a unified campus community supporting the trials and tribulations of the Hoosier football team, the parade was also divided by undertones of political turmoil. For instance, the IU College Democrats were pelted by water balloons by members of one fraternity on Third Street who were hugging a cardboard cutout of President Bush; another fraternity on Third Street verbally bombarded the group of Democratic students with the chant: "Four more years," after confronting them face-to-face in the street.\nBefore a one-minute firework show about three hundred feet above Franklin Hall, IU cheerleaders, the IU alumni band, the Red Steppers and the Marching Hundred kept the campus community pepped in between verbal contributions from Herbert, Football Coach Gerry DiNardo, IU Athletic Director Rick Greenspan, the IU Olympians and IU kicker Adam Braucher, who screamed to the crowd: "We are going to kick some Gopher ass."\n"I want you to know; tomorrow, things are going to change," DiNardo said, not knowing for certain if change was necessarily going to equate to a Hoosier win.\nConcluding with loud pops, bangs and crashes, the 2004 "The Legend of Old IU" Homecoming parade and pep rally generated a base of support for the football team from hundreds of campus community members. \nConrad Nicholas and Lisette Hopkins, fire work specialists from Pyrotechnic Productions Inc., said the fireworks add to crowd excitement and are a great way to cap off the evening for Hoosier football fans.\n"Human beings like big explosions," Nicholas said. "If I didn't, I wouldn't be doing this. After the show, from this distance, all we hear is car horns because we are so far away. We put on a shooters school. Students graduate to where they are out doing firework shows on their own; it pays well." \n-- Contact staff writer David A. Nosko at dnosko@indiana.edu.