A century of coming home: the evolution of Gallaudet’s Homecoming

Nothing quite captures the spirit of the Gallaudet community like Homecoming. Our alumni fly in from all around the world, the entire campus is temporarily the exclusive domain of the Office of Alumni Relations, and a happy sort of chaos reigns until its culmination in the Saturday football game.

Considering how deeply rooted Homecoming clearly seems to be, it’s notable that the tradition is only a few decades old; more notable is the fact that the celebration itself has changed considerably over the years.

One of the most reliable sources in the Archives for understanding the history of Gallaudet is The Buff and Blue. Founded in 1892, the student-run magazine started off as a literary showcase, of sorts; essays, stories, and poetry made up the bulk of the publication, but from its early days, it included reportage on events on campus, as well as general observations (“The first June-bug, yesterday.” – April 12, 1893).

Homecoming’s early days

From close observation of The Buff and Blue, it becomes clear that Homecoming didn’t really become an established tradition until sometime in the early 1930s. There’s an October report of a “home-coming” in June 1924 for alumni: a five-day slate of activities and excursions, but no football game or parades.

This tracks with most of the rest of the United States. Homecoming as a collegiate tradition started sometime in the early 20^th century; The Missourian has a 2006 article detailing the murky origins of Homecoming, which are disputed by no less than three separate universities. It took some time to spread to other institutions, including Gallaudet.

In 1937, a Buff and Blue article describing a “gala Homecoming” set for November 13 mentions offhandedly that it’s Gallaudet’s first Homecoming since 1934. To be chaired by Leo Jacobs, ’38, the dance promises to be “a hilarious evening of fun”; the article closes with sunny optimism as the author notes the Gallaudet Blues’ poor season thus far but intimates that the team will finally reach its “full power” in time for Homecoming. They lost 21-0.

By the early 1950s, Homecoming had become fully entrenched as a tradition, with a Queen to be crowned at halftime, followed by a parade. You can see an example in the first four minutes of this video, courtesy of Rosalyn Gannon, ’59. 

In the mid-1960s, we didn’t see much change from the 1950s: the game, the parade, the Queen, and the dance. In 1964, Al Couthen’s, ’66, final year as co-captain and quarterback, the Homecoming game ended with the Howard Bisons beating the Gallaudet Bisons 50-6. Frank Turk, ’52 & H-’97, commented that he had “the weakest team, material-wise, that he had ever seen, but the best team in the amount of determination and spirit he had ever coached.” The halftime football game played by freshman and sophomore women may have helped lift people’s spirits.

The celebration grows

From this point, Homecoming at Gallaudet started to become more elaborate. The Homecoming game of October 1970 saw a show from the Joint Armed Forces Color Guard and a skydiving demonstration by a pair of paratroopers from Baltimore, jumping out of a plane doing a flyby of campus. This year is notable in the election of Gallaudet’s first Black Deaf Homecoming Queen, Plumie H. Gainey, ’71, and also in the Bison’s 25-14 victory over the DC Teachers’ College Cougars.

By 1976, Homecoming had expanded to several days between Thursday and Monday of Homecoming weekend. Alpha Sigma Pi published a calendar in The Buff and Blue that included, respectively, no less than two pep rallies, the crowning of the Queen at a party the night before the game, a buffet for alumni, a banquet and ball, and an appointment with “numerous hangovers” the following morning. No game results were announced in The Buff and Blue this year; apparently the relevant issue was canceled because no one could submit their articles on time.

By 1980, “Spirit Week” had evolved from Homecoming, including interclass competitions, such as the “yelling contest,” an ice cream contest, and skits. The football team had been suspended at the beginning of the school year; the number of players showing up for practice fluctuated wildly from day to day, leaving some doubt about whether a full team could be fielded consistently. Instead, students mustered up enthusiasm for women’s field hockey, soccer, and rugby.

In 1985, The Buff and Blue conducted an exhaustive survey of the history of Homecoming at Gallaudet, and concluded that it would only get bigger and better from that point on. The Class of 1987 won Spirit Week and the Bison fell to Tennessee Wesleyan, 31-21. By 1990, the football game was less of a focus (a loss to St. John Fisher, 6-0) than the Homecoming Ball, which elicited both compliments and criticism.

The Bison go Wild

By 1996, the Ball—or Ballroom, as it was called—was making headlines in The Buff and Blue. Hosted on a four-deck ship called “The Spirit of Washington,” attendance was estimated at 575, which appears to have been a good time until it was discovered that the ship’s crew had neglected to provide any way of distinguishing attendees of drinking age from those who were too young to imbibe, then simply served everyone. That lasted an hour as fights began to break out and students began to get sick. The cruise was over by the second hour of the night.

An editorial in the same issue had this to say: “There were a total of approximately 15 fights, a number which I, as well as most of us, should consider extreme.” The writer went on to say that this was the third Homecoming that had been impacted by student behavior. Man-on-the-street interviews included an assertion that fights were now part of the tradition of Homecoming—and who was anyone to mess with tradition?

The football game first appears on page 16: A loss to Valley Forge, 39-13.

1996 seems to have been an inflection point; the following year features guest writers arguing for and against attending Homecoming, given the disruption in previous years, as well as numerous columns and op-eds noting the reduced turnout and lack of organization. Others decried the low attendance of Spirit Week activities and wondered if it was on the way out too. Valley Forge again carried the day, 51-7.

The tradition matures

In 1999, the last year available in our digital collections that covers Homecoming, it turned out that no chairperson had been elected to oversee Homecoming festivities, there was no longer a Spirit Week, and the class competition was down to a single pep rally. Two pairs of Homecoming royalty had been elected, however, and enthusiasm seemed high. The Bison even managed their own turnaround, defeating Walter Reed U.S. Army 42-14 in an outright rout.

The Archives’ records end there, at least for now. Homecoming has obviously continued to live on, but has shifted significantly. Although there continue to be activities for students, the focus is on alumni; reunion events, campus tours, and excursions in the city dominate the Homecoming calendar, and the football game is more about the opportunity to spend a nice day outside with several hundred former classmates.

In a sense, the emphasis has become less about continuity of tradition and more about celebrating Gallaudet, sharing a little more time with people you shared a few years with once, long ago, and connecting with different generations of students. Those generations invariably experience a different Gallaudet from that of their predecessors, and that process of comparing notes builds a fuller picture of the university as it exists in time.

Of course, one thing hasn’t changed much: The Bison lost to Randolph Macon, 47-7. At this point, losing the Homecoming game is as much of a tradition as anything else.