Homecoming Week is in full effect and Parent and Family Weekend is approaching quickly, starting on Oct. 1 and running through Oct. 3.
This week will be filled with events like the Homecoming Parade, a family paint party and a succulent potting workshop. There will also be an event called Coffee and Conversation with the President where university president Dr. Marlene Tromp will speak to students and families about the university and answer any questions they may have.
This Parent and Family Weekend is special because it will be the first in-person Homecoming Week since 2019. There was, however, a virtual parent weekend event held at the beginning of this year to make up for 2020.
Program Coordinator for Orientation and Family Outreach Emese Frank has been working to coordinate events for Parent and Family Weekend alongside the Homecoming planning committee.
Facial coverings will be required at all events this weekend, per university COVID policy. Most will be held in outdoor spaces, with the exception of the Friday night Family Paint Party in the Jordan Ballroom.
“We are requiring masks at any of the events that we are hosting for Parent and Family weekend and that includes the president’s event unless people are actively eating and drinking,” Frank said. “In addition, all of our events will be held outdoors as long as weather permits and space permits, and we are still going to have 6 feet of social distance for all of our tables.”
Additionally, virtual tickets will be used in place of physical tickets this year.
“As far as our parent family weekend events, we won’t have physical tickets as we had in the past,” Frank said. “They’re just going to have their name on a list, they show us their ID and we check them off so fewer things are getting touched along the way.”
Senior accounting major Alec Rea is the president of The Corral, Boise State’s spirited student organization that hosts interactive events around campus for students and staff. The Corral will be supporting Broncos this weekend at each of the athletic events.
The Corral will also be participating in the Bronco Cup, the Homecoming Parade and a tailgate before the football game. Before COVID-19, the football players participated in the Bronco walk, where they walked to the stadium to get the fans pumped up for the game. However, this year will be different.
“The players are still walking down Bronco lane, [by] the Bronco gym in a safer manner where they’re not going to have fans the entire way there,” Rea said.
Rea and The Corral will be at the football game on Saturday, Oct. 2, cheering on the Broncos with the rest of the student body.
Frank is anticipating a big turnout, given that this is the first in-person Parent and Family Weekend since 2019. According to Frank, as of Sept. 27 at 2 p.m., 3,984 student tickets have been sold for this weekend’s game against the University of Nevada, Reno.
With this influx in ticket sales, Frank and her team are expecting a positive trend in attendance of parents and student’s other family members this weekend, especially in the first-year and sophomore populations, since these events were either canceled or cut short because of COVID-19.
“I know people were pretty sad that we weren’t able to have [Parent and Family Weekend] last year, and especially for our rising sophomores and their families who missed out on their student’s very first parent family weekend,” Frank said. “A larger percentage of them are coming this year so … I think this year we’re going to see the largest percentage both in our first-year class as well as our sophomore class.”
Further information about events for Parent and Family Weekend can be found on their website, including costs for individual events, which range from free to $25.
