While much of the attention this weekend was on the Cal upset of UCLA, Homecoming Weekend drew thousands of people to dozens of other events, including a campuswide Instagram photo contest and scavenger hunt, faculty seminars and campus tours.
The weekend began on Friday. A noontime rally in front of Sproul Hall, which featured the Cal Band playing spirit songs in anticipation of Saturday’s football game, attracted about a thousand people. Grandmothers danced to the music and little kids ran rampant.
A dad in Cal gear put his one-year-old daughter, who was dressed in blue and gold, on his shoulder and swayed back and forth while his daughter waved her arms excitedly. Oski also made an appearance for alumni and families, who took pictures with him.
According to Jose Rodriguez, a member of the marketing and communications team for university relations, approximately 5,000 alumni and parents registered for the weekend online, and many more came to campus without registering.
Rodriguez said the first Homecoming Weekend was in 1997, though there have been Homecoming football games long before then. Having an organized Homecoming Weekend, he said, introduces parents to UC Berkeley and allows alumni to see how the campus has changed since they attended it.
Robert Goodwin, a 1981 graduate of UC Berkeley, said that many new buildings, including Stanley Hall, have changed the way the campus looks.
“Things have changed so much for the better.” Goodwin, who has a daughter currently enrolled, said. “It was really a terrific weekend.”
The campus also hosted its first Instagram contest on Friday and Saturday, inviting people to take pictures that best captured the idea of Homecoming. According to the Homecoming program, aside from an Instagram-capable device and public account, having an “eye for mobile photography, sense of humor, and knowledge of campus wouldn’t hurt either.”
At a Quidditch game on Saturday, many parents and children watched gleefully as they saw the sport from the Harry Potter series come to life.
In addition to holding events for students and parents, the campus also held reunions for alumni. The class of 1954, which was celebrating its 58th reunion, was the oldest organized group on campus. Together, the alumni groups presented a check of $16 million for the campus to UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, according to a tweet by Diane Dwyer, a UC Berkeley alumna.
For many, Cal football’s 43-17 upset of UCLA was the highlight of the weekend and attracted so many dressed in Cal gear that it looked like the student store had been raided.
Ken Montgomery, a UC Berkeley alumnus, tweeted after the game, “Renovated Memorial Stadium, $350M. Tix to game $100. Seeing great friends as @cal destroys UCLA, priceless.”
A UC Berkeley-facilitated Storify account asked UCLA fans, “Do you wear real blue or is it powder?”
For junior exchange student Sophie Kennedy-Cooke, this weekend allowed her to see her mother, whom she hadn’t seen since mid-August. Her mother, Joanna Kennedy-Cooke, who took an 11-hour flight from London to San Francisco on Wednesday, was able to go sightseeing in San Francisco and attend Saturday’s football game with her daughter.
She added that her mother found the campus to be completely different from British universities. When she took her mother to a sorority event Sunday, she said her mother’s reaction was that “everyone had really nice hair.”
Her mother was even more surprised by what she found at the co-op where Kennedy-Cooke lives, which offers double credit for chores that are performed naked.
“My mom came and told me, ‘Sophie, there’s someone naked in the kitchen!’” Kennedy-Cooke said.
Contact Shannon Carroll at [email protected].
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