Homecoming is one of the biggest student activities from high school to college, and last semester was the first time that an actual committee of students was created to plan the event. Before that, the office of Student Development and Orientation planned the entire thing.

“I really want this committee to be a big deal because it would help to have the input of students,” Activities Coordinator for Student Development and Orientation Mario Ramirez said.

There are four different committees to handle the different requirements of planning Homecoming Week.

The marketing committee promotes the entire event by distributing posters, and flyers, and getting the word out about each event. The idea is to make MSU visibly different all around the campus to advertise.

The student organization competition committee does just that, they organize the competitions happening on campus during homecoming. This group gets to decide which prizes will be given, as well as advertising their events throughout campus.

The parade committee gets to plan the parade, and put together different groups to take part. Recruiting and advertising are also part of their responsibilities.

Last is the special project committee which plans the bigger events such as Friday night live, the all school picnic, and the bonfire event, where the torchlight parade takes place.

Last semester, few students applied to be a part of the committees, and only three participated in the planning.

“My most prominent reason for joining the homecoming committee last fall was the fact that I simply wanted to see changes made, so I decided to take the initiative to make them happen,” Taylor Duval, senior in mechanical engineering said. “I thought it would be really cool to change it up or to integrate new advertising methods in order to get more students to each event.”

So far, MSU has done a really good job of sticking to traditions that have been used for many years. Changing that tradition even a little bit, may convince more people to attend the event next year.

“It never hurts to put a new, modern twist into an event sometimes,” Duvall said. “I theorized that attendance at events would increase if we tried to really focus on branching out from tradition, and maybe just putting a little more of our resources towards certain events.”

So far, on a few applications have actually been submitted for the 2014-15 homecoming. Deadline is April 18, and applications are available online.