Each generation of UF students sets its own traditions, and they will all come together during the 2015 homecoming celebration.
This year’s theme is “Be The Tradition,” the UF Homecoming and Gator Growl organization announced Monday.
Maddie Daugherty, a Gator Growl producer, said there were about 100 submissions in its “You Choose” contest, which allowed students to suggest this year’s theme, adding that a lot of the submissions played off the word “tradition.”
“Once we kind of looked at them collectively, it was just something that came together based on all of the ideas,” the 21-year old said.
Santiago Ramirez, the associate producer of communications for Homecoming and Gator Growl, said the theme is one that both UF students and alumni can relate to.
“It’s not just one tradition,” Ramirez said, “but it’s what the students do during that time, and what they leave behind and how they leave their mark at the university.”
Following last year’s Gator Growl, which was held on UF’s Flavet Field instead of the football stadium for the first time in 82 years, Ramirez said the committee put out a student survey and received generally positive feedback.
Evan Morris, a junior at UF, has gone to Gator Growl for the past three years and said last year’s Gator Growl on Flavet Field was the most enjoyable of the three.
The 21-year-old marketing major said while he understands some students did not like the change of venue because of the long-standing tradition of holding Gator Growl in the football stadium, he liked the atmosphere at Flavet Field.
“It gave it that kind of music-festival feel,” Morris said.
To Morris, the theme “Be the Tradition” gives current students an opportunity to show that they are making an imprint on UF.
“It’s kind of taking the great history of being a Gator and going to UF and all the rituals behind that and making it our own,” he said.
Now that the committee has agreed on a theme, which Ramirez said gives the committee guidelines to follow, it can start figuring out who will be performing at the event.
Ramirez said talent will be selected by the end of Summer B, but the 21-year-old political science and public relations junior said there is still going to be student input.
“It’s not just a decision that the producer or myself or anyone on Gator Growl staff makes just on their own,” he said.
In this long exposure photo, cars drive past the arch near Heavener Hall overlooking West University Avenue and Southwest 13th Street. Summer A classes began yesterday and will run through June 19.
