Planning A Pep Rally

As Chair of the Homecoming Committee, I’d like to give some insight into planning a pep rally. How do you engage over 1000 students for at least an hour, make it full of school pride, show off some organizations? It’s a strenuous task to oversee tech, visuals, performance management, a live audience, and keeping to a schedule. The basic answers to these questions would be lots of planning and constant communication. However, when looking deeper into it, there are truly about 300 steps and a million follow-up emails that make a pep rally possible.

When first beginning pep rally planning, it was December 2018, and I was already trying to get an outline together of what we need which would include who goes where, who does what, and whatever else came to mind. I was new to the position and wanted homecoming to be great but how do you do that when you really are going off of nothing? All throughout winter break, I brainstormed and thought of anything fun that could be done to really engage my fellow students. 

All of a sudden, it is spring semester and trying to get the committee together was a whole other hurdle. When we’re all finally available to meet, I learn that the gym will be undergoing the re-flooring process. This means that the gym is completely unusable for a large chunk of the fall semester, including homecoming week. It was up to us to find a back-up location and ARMAH only has a rough estimate of space for 600 seats and standing room for upward of 800, ultimately too small for a pep rally which pulls around 1,000 people. ARMAH is the largest hall on campus, so we began to look outside. Clocktower Quad and Upper Quad were both too small or too difficult for tech, thus we settle on the stadium. It has plenty of seating, we can use the stadium speakers and jumbotron, room on the track to present and the grass for performers. However, if it rained, there was nowhere else we could go and, as we all know, Frostburg weather sure is unpredictable. Since we had no other choice, we weighed the risk, took the chance and continued with planning. 

Flash to the beginning of the fall semester, five weeks out from homecoming. We need to get a line-up together – who’s performing, what music, contact sports teams, who is speaking, how long do we have, etc. Then we look at the day itself and see that a women’s soccer game is going on, pushing the pep rally back to begin at 9 p.m. With such a late start, we limit ourselves to an hour. The next challenge is picking performers, getting their music, making sure they’re safe and all administrators and students are comfortable with where they will perform. We vet organizations and put them in the schedule. All of this planning leads to several changes in the schedule, so we alter it for this thing and that thing, all while having people drop out or not responding at all. 

Finally, when everyone begins answering in various forms, music is set, emcees are ready, students are excited, and hair and makeup appointments are booked. That’s when we see that the forecast calls for rain. Truly one of the worst things that can happen. There is no available back-up location, thousands of dollars of tech would be at risk, tech, facilities, and police are all booked and set for that date alone, and the call has to be made a full day in advance. There has to be time to notify all court candidates, sports teams, performers, and students, and the forecast was suggesting storms for pep rally day. As mere Frostburg students, we are not meteorologists so what the forecast says is what we go off of. The pep rally was canceled. A year in the making, wiped away in a single email. Everyone is upset. Not only students but administration, the Homecoming Committee, community members, and a whole list of others as well. This was not a stunt to save money, to screw over students, or to target anyone involved. This event was planned by students for students, and we are just as upset as everyone else. Sometimes, life happens. A storm comes or it doesn’t, but we have to plan ahead to protect our equipment and anyone in attendance. 

Next year, we will try again. But for now, don’t be mad at administrators, students or anyone else involved. There was a prediction of weather that had to be taken seriously. When the rain didn’t come, everything was already canceled, and plans were changed. Workers cannot just be pulled around from job to job on a whim; they need advanced notice and planning. As Chair, I am truly sorry and very angry. Please, stay respectful, keep your Frostburg Pride, and look forward to the next year when we do it all again.