Valparaiso University kicked off one of its biggest weekends of the year on Friday as current students, community members, and alumni from around the Region and beyond converged on campus for the university’s 2023 Homecoming festivities.
The weekend is packed full of events – a football game, a concert, volleyball games, movie nights, lectures, and more. One of the headliners on Friday evening as celebrations began was the Think & Drink Trivia Night, hosted at the Bell and Beacon in Harre Union. Class of 2000 alumnus and Director of Corporate and Employer Relations at Valparaiso University Kurt Gillins emceed the event and saw many Beacons return to campus throughout the day.
“We’ve been working registration all day and been seeing lots of hugs and screams of joy when people see friends from years ago,” Gillins said. “We just registered a gentleman from the Class of 1952. If my math is right, he’s about 92 or 93 years old but no less excited to be here.”
The theme for this year’s homecoming is “Valpo Through the Decades.” Think & Drink matched it by offering questions that took participants from the 1950s through to today, with one question from each decade focused on Valparaiso University.
“Those Valpo questions are actually pretty difficult,” Gillins said. “Our Archives & Special Collections department gave us those questions, so it seems they like to pose a challenge. We’ve got some celebration boxes with a couple of different things added in there that we’re giving away as prizes.”
Rich Redman, a graduate from the Class of 1973, was not particularly confident of his odds of winning one of the boxes but was excited to be participating in the festivities.
“It’s fun to be back on campus and see people that we haven’t seen in a while and meet some new ones,” he said. “We were just at the Kretzmann Society Reception and heard three 2024 Valpo grads, and they were very glowing about their experience here and their plans for their careers. It warms our hearts to know that Valpo is still sending great people out into the world.”
He said that there is a certain makeup that Valparaiso University instills in its students, one that helps draw back the crowd for homecoming celebrations each year.
“A lot of it is the camaraderie that we develop on campus as students,” Redman said. “That’s carried on for 50 years. We have couples that come back on campus together that we’ve met up with and it’s like we’re picking up right where we left off 50 years later.”
Valparaiso University’s celebrations continue throughout the weekend, with the Beacons taking on the Marist Red Foxes at noon on Brown Field. There are also an array of free events on offer, such as Robotic Football at 10 a.m. on Saturday in the Hilltop Gym, a Chorale and Orchestra concert at 4 p.m. in the Chapel of Resurrection, and a showing of Encanto at dusk on the Harre Union West Lawn.
For more information, visit valpo.edu/homecoming.
