Autumn 2008: Register

Homecoming attendees around a table on the quad

welcome home: Reunion attendance at Homecoming this year was more than double that of 2007.

Tom Brodnax

Reunions highlight Homecoming fun

With record attendance in 2008, it’s clear the tradition is catching on

Homecoming attendees around a table on the quad

welcome home: Reunion attendance at Homecoming this year was more than double that of 2007.

Tom Brodnax

By Eric Rangus

As the sun set on Emory’s campus, Friday, September 26, excitement was just starting to rise. The Woodruff P. E. Center was rocking as the Emory men’s soccer team took a 1–0 first-half lead over Maryville that would hold up for the Eagles’ eighth straight win to start the season. Meanwhile, inside the P. E. Center, the women’s volleyball team was knocking off Trinity, the fifth-ranked team in the country.

In the Math and Science Center, more than 140 African American alumni and students celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the Black Student Alliance (BSA) and the twentieth anniversary of the creation of the Caucus of Emory Black Alumni (CEBA), two of the University’s most influential organizations for Emory students and alumni of color.

Over at Asbury Circle, the newly dedicated Dooley statue overlooked its domain, now littered with the scattered remains of more than forty floats that wound their way through campus as part of the Homecoming parade.

And all of this was just the beginning. In all, some four thousand guests attended more than a hundred Homecoming-related events September 26 to 28—the largest celebration ever.

“Everyone I spoke with had a special time,” said Victoria Pepe Erat 83C, of Rockville, Maryland, whose 25-Year Reunion followed up its casual Friday gathering with a formal party in the Miller-Ward Alumni House Saturday night. “The yearbooks scattered around the room were a nice touch.”

The Class of 1983 was one of ten undergraduate classes holding reunions—all those years ending in “8” or “3” stretching back to 1963 and including, for the first time, a “Zero-Year Reunion” for members of the Class of 2008.

“It was a fantastic weekend,” said Moe Soriano 76C 79D 81DR, of Roswell. Soriano was one of the attendees of a reunion of close to one hundred Alpha Epsilon Pi brothers from 1976 to 1980 that was organized by the brothers themselves, with assistance from the EAA. “Knowing your friends are coming makes you want to go, too.”

Eric Rangus is director of communications for the EAA.