Homecoming might be behind us, but the memories Furman University students make each year last a lifetime.<\/p>\n
Maybe that\u2019s why registration was up among alumni returning to campus to celebrate alongside the current crop of students.<\/p>\n
Friday night\u2019s carnival was busy with alumni, students, faculty, staff and families. Participation from alumni and relatives of students appeared up across the board, said Lauren Pollino, assistant director of alumni engagement. Nearly 1,500 alumni registered for homecoming events this year, Pollino said, and that number doesn’t capture individual reunion events or alumni who attended, but didn’t register.<\/p>\n
\u201cFurman is all about relationships,\u201d said Ford Riddle, director of alumni engagement. \u201cAlumni wanted the nostalgia of being back on the mall, building floats, connecting with former classmates and visiting with faculty and staff who were key mentors in their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Furman students and alumni celebrated traditions and made new memories all weekend long, whether by making the campus pop with color by chalking the sidewalks, attaching chicken wire to wooden frames to build floats<\/a>, hopping on amusement rides at the Homecoming Carnival, sampling Furman\u2019s new Bonhomie wines<\/a>, reuniting at a tailgate or cheering on the Paladins across five athletic events over the weekend. One featured game was the first contest in the newly renovated Timmons Arena. A sold-out house watched the Furman men\u2019s basketball team play an exhibition game against the Alabama Crimson Tide. The Paladins played a gritty game but came up short against the 15th<\/sup>-ranked Tide 96-71.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nearly 1,500 alumni returned to Furman\u2019s campus to celebrate alongside students as the mall flooded with activity all weekend long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":401,"featured_media":39919,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,3404,3492,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-bicentennial","category-campus-events","category-student-life"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39945"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39954,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39945\/revisions\/39954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}