Gigi De Buselle wore a crown of roses when she was crowned Ohio University’s 1964 Homecoming Queen. De Buselle was born in Germany but hailed from Cleveland, and Saturday, Oct. 24, 1964, she hoisted a trophy during the homecoming football game against Miami.
De Buselle was just one of many Homecoming queens in the over 82-year tradition. Despite the popularity of the former honoring of Homecoming royalty, the tradition has not been a part of Homecoming celebrations for the past four years.
The coronation was paused when COVID-19 hit, as homecoming traditions were carried out largely virtually. According to Josh Gruenke, director for student organizations and campus programming, some students suggested the Homecoming King and Queen tradition should be discontinued after COVID-19.
In response, a committee of representatives from University Communications and Marketing, the Alumni Association and the Division of Student Affairs met to discuss alternatives.
“(The committee) decided that in lieu of a Homecoming court, there were alternative options that could better highlight our students’ successes, such as recognizing OHIO’s senior of the year award winners,” Samantha Pelham, a media relations specialist and university spokesperson, wrote in an email.
Pelham said the committee is currently in the process of detailing what a new recognition tradition could be.
Homecoming as a concept emerged among college campuses in the 1910s, but it made its way to OU for the first recorded time in 1919. A Nov. 14, 1919, edition of the Green and White – The Post’s predecessor – wrote “We are prepared to accommodate all Ohio Alumni who will return for the Home Coming on November 22.”
In 1923, the event was dubbed “Dad’s Day Home Coming,” marking the first of many doubly-celebrated weekends.
The first mention of a Homecoming Queen is in the 1937 Green and White coverage, which mentions crowning an Ohio Queen and a Marshall Queen, with the representative of the winning football team crowned the official Homecoming Queen. However, the tied Homecoming game led to a joint crowning. While this is not introduced as a new concept, neither the Green and White nor the Athena Yearbook coverage from 1936 mentioned a queen.
With several years off during World War II, the 1946 Homecoming was an exciting event. The crowning of a queen returned, with an Athena Yearbook spread displaying the queen candidates atop a float in the annual parade.
The Post itself published the annual crowning of the queen on the front page of its annual Homecoming edition, printed the Friday of Homecoming weekend. In 1964, a scandal broke out when the Homecoming Committee accused The Post of leaking secret Homecoming details in the past. The committee refused to share queen and court selections in advance so they could appear in its annual edition. According to University Archivist and Records Manager Bill Kimok’s digital 2020 OU homecoming history, The Post left the space allotted for the announcement intentionally blank.
In the 1960s, activist mentalities lessened enthusiasm toward Homecoming, temporarily phasing out certain traditions or resulting in low turnouts. In the early ‘70s, homecoming festivities were largely replaced by an Oktoberfest celebration.
A 1975 Post article discussed apathy in Athens, and the then-president of the Center Program Board, Nadine Lomakin, said she was glad the campus began to celebrate again. However, the return of certain traditions did not involve the return of a Homecoming queen competition, which was largely believed to not fit into Athens’ spirit at the time.
“That concept didn’t really go away on other campuses,” then-assistant director of the Alumni Association G. Douglas Voelz said regarding Homecoming queens. “But I’m not sure that we will ever get back to that point here. I don’t know if Athens is behind or ahead. We’re just different.”
Some students, however, still felt a homecoming queen belonged on campus, resulting in various student organizations sponsoring their own Homecoming Queens. The same year, 1975, introduced the Miss Black Homecoming Pageant. A decade later, in 1985, the title raised questions about segregation.
Two queens were set to be named that year, one by the Interfraternity Council and Women’s Panhellenic Association, who planned to crown a Greek Homecoming Court, and one crowned by the Black Student Cultural Programming Board, or BSCPB, and National Panhellenic Council, which governed historically Black Greek organizations.
“Black students are slighted here, and we need something special for us,” Renee Mahaffey, then-second-year BSCPB president, said in a 1985 edition of The Post.
Mahaffey said the Greek contest was a popularity contest, saying that is why the contest was initially discontinued the decade prior. Instead, the Miss Black Homecoming Queen title was awarded based on how much money candidates raised for charitable causes.
“All of the girls are winners,” Denise Shepard, then-assistant associate chairman for the BSCPB, said in a 1978 Post report. “They are the ones who, by fundraising, make this whole evening possible. The girls are aware of how the queen is selected, so there is little, if any, jealousy.”
In 1987, a king and queen were crowned alongside a Miss Black OU Homecoming Queen. The king and queen duo were seniors nominated by their respective sorority and fraternity homes, and the winners were selected based on which houses donated the most canned food to the Red Cross.
The BSCPB Homecoming tradition lasted 33 years, ending in 2010 when OU began crowning an official king, queen and court once more. Instead, the BSCPB coronation was held during Parents Weekend, which led to a drop in attendance and general confusion.
“It’s been very difficult for us not to have (the coronation) during Homecoming Weekend,” Leah Ward, then-president of BSCPB said in a 2010 Post report. “Even the freshman didn’t understand why it wasn’t during Homecoming.”
To ensure students did not think she was bashing Homecoming, she applied for Bobcat Court – the OU Homecoming Court – to smooth over any perceptions.
Bobcat Court invited seniors with a 2.75 GPA or higher to apply to be on the court. Five male and five female students were selected for the Court, and online voting determined the king and queen.
The tradition continued until 2019, with the final crowning. According to OU’s announcement of the 2019 Homecoming Court, over 100 students were nominated, and 32 were selected to complete interviews. From those interviews, only 10 were chosen to sit on the court.
The final crowning took place during the Homecoming football game. The winners, Jewel Henderson, a sports management major, and O’Neal Saunders, a management information systems and analytics major, did not indicate ending the tradition, but no royalty has been crowned since. COVID-19 overthrew OU’s storied monarchy.
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