{"id":880,"date":"2016-02-08T16:22:04","date_gmt":"2016-02-08T21:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2016\/02\/08\/furman-celebrates-homecoming-weekend\/"},"modified":"2022-11-07T14:59:58","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T19:59:58","slug":"furman-celebrates-homecoming-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/furman-celebrates-homecoming-weekend\/","title":{"rendered":"Friends, family, fun and lots of photos; Furman celebrates Homecoming weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Students<\/a><\/p>\n

OCTOBER 22, 2012
\nby Kylee Perez, Contributing Writer<\/p>\n

Fifty-five years ago, Pat Morgan was part of the final freshman class at Furman\u2019s downtown campus. Since then, he\u2019s watched the current campus change and grow dramatically over the years. But for him, it\u2019s not the campus that makes Furman home.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy favorite homecoming tradition is meeting and greeting friends,\u201d Morgan \u201861 said. \u201cSome I haven’t seen in a long time. It\u2019s a family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morgan and his fellow alumni returned to Furman Oct. 19-21 to celebrate homecoming. For three days, the campus was filled with excitement as alumni greeted old friends, introduced new family members, and met current students.<\/p>\n

The event reached its climax Friday night when Furman Mall was filled with thousands of alumni, friends and students who descended on campus to view homecoming floats and play carnival games.<\/p>\n

\u201cWalking around the mall on Friday night is one of my favorite parts of homecoming,\u201d said Greg Lewis \u201891, an associate professor of biology at Furman. \u201cI like bringing my daughter and her friends out for the rides and having the opportunity to see former students and other alums from my time at Furman.\u201d<\/p>\n

The event helps bring the student body closer together, but it also gives student organizations a chance to welcome back alumni and introduce them to new members.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gets everyone out,\u201d said Mattson Smith \u201813 (Tega Cay, S.C.). \u201cFriday night we\u2019ll be on the mall until one or two in the morning and we\u2019re planning on having a big dinner with a bunch of fraternity alumni from all different years. It\u2019s one of my favorite nights of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n

For classes ending in years two and seven, it was reunion weekend. The groups celebrated with a number of special events, including a reunion dinner in downtown Greenville.<\/p>\n

But on Saturday, campus was the place to be–especially for Furman\u2019s newest alums.<\/p>\n

\u201cI forgot how beautiful the campus is and how much it feels like home,\u201d said Susannah Morris \u201812.<\/p>\n

The fields and parking lots were dotted with purple and white tailgating tents and packed with thousands of alumni. They trickled in and out of the academic buildings to visit former professors before eating a picnic lunch at the Cherrydale Alumni House.<\/p>\n

The alums then watched the Furman football team play Georgia Southern at Paladin Stadium.<\/p>\n

Throughout the day, alums reminisced about their college days, and reconnected with friends. It\u2019s what continues to bring Morgan back to Furman.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the friends we had in school, we still have today thanks to the small university atmosphere,\u201d Morgan said. \u201cIf I had gone to a big school, I wouldn\u2019t even bother going to homecoming because you\u2019re just a number there.\u201d<\/p>\n

University Photographer Jeremy Fleming attended Homecoming weekend. View his work <\/a>or see our Storify<\/a> from the event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifty-five years ago, Pat Morgan was part of the final freshman class at Furman\u2019s downtown campus. Since then, he\u2019s watched the current campus change and grow dramatically over the years. But for him, it\u2019s not the campus that makes Furman home.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy favorite homecoming tradition is meeting and greeting friends,\u201d Morgan \u201861 said. \u201cSome I haven’t seen in a long time. It\u2019s a family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morgan and his fellow alumni returned to Furman Oct. 19-21 to celebrate homecoming. For three days, the campus was filled with excitement as alumni greeted old friends, introduced new family members, and met current students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,3,35,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrative","category-alumni","category-parent-news","category-student-life"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880","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\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}