From games to rallies, Berkeley students, parents, alumni and faculty gathered to enjoy homecoming weekend Friday through Sunday.

With the ongoing pandemic, the UC Rally Committee collaborated with more than 120 members from both the executive and general committee to organize the annual event, according to UC Rally Committee chair Kristiana Hernandez. During the weekend, people were able to participate in history and trivia night, celebrate Oski’s 80th birthday, watch student performances, attend the homecoming rally and more.

“Overall, all the events went super, super great. It’s been two years since we’ve had an in-person homecoming weekend,” Hernandez said. “It was kind of crazy to see everything come together.”

Hernandez said the turnout for this year’s homecoming events, especially the homecoming rally, was much higher than expected. Given COVID-19 restrictions, parents and alumni also had the opportunity to register for virtual homecoming celebrations. The rally, for example, was streamed live on Youtube and garnered more than 2,000 views.

Campus spokesperson Janet Gilmore agreed, stating that with 5,300 in-person and 2,400 virtually registered guests, she was “thrilled” with the overall turnout.

“We were able to expand to 2,000 other people virtually and that was something we did specifically for this hybrid homecoming weekend,” Hernandez said. “This is definitely something that we’re kind of looking to — hopefully, if we have the budget for — continue in years to come because it was really cool to expand beyond people physically in Berkeley.”

Hernandez was the vice chair of rallies last year and helped plan a homecoming rally. She noted that because homecoming was virtual last year, student performances were pre-recorded rather than live streamed.

This year, however, the Rally Committee had to follow current COVID-19 guidelines.

Campus requires all in-person homecoming guests at indoor events with food and drink to be vaccinated, but Gilmore said they cannot promise that there were no unvaccinated people there, “as a result of exemptions, exceptions, fraudulent verification or checker error.”

With these restrictions, ASUC Senator Muz Ahmad noted that abiding by COVID-19 guidelines to ensure that attendees have a safe and healthy environment is the biggest challenge with organizing this year’s homecoming.

Hernandez echoed Ahmad, adding the committee recognized the difficulty of organizing in-person rallies and originally planned to livestream the rally on Youtube.

“You need to adjust with just the flexibility standpoint, in both student performing groups, and just like COVID safety, audience and all that,” Hernandez said.