Every year, the students and alumni of USC gather for an annual Homecoming parade to welcome back alumni and promote the community at South Carolina.
During this week, the Greek organizations pair up in teams featuring a sorority and a fraternity, build a float and showcase it. One such team this year was the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority and the Theta Chi fraternity.
"We partnered with Theta Chi, they asked us at the beginning of the year," London Weston, third-year tourism management student and Alpha Gamma's VP of campus relations, said. "I'm really good friends with their Homecoming chair, so we've been in contact."
The theme of this year's parade was "life in garnet and black". Alpha Gamma's float this year featured the school's mascot, Cocky, rising out of flames, to show part of the school's traditions.
"What Homecoming commission wanted us to do was make a design that related to the traditions or symbols of USC and what that means to us," Weston said. "I guess what Amelia came up with was Cocky rising out of these flames ... Cocky's such a big part of our school and such a good mascot, so hopefully we make that look good."
Alpha Gamma and Theta Chi began their construction of the float Wednesday night, carrying over into Thursday, and again on Friday morning. During their first night's construction however, Weston said they ran into a hurdle.
"[Wednesday] night, one of the fraternities on another team blew out the fuse out of the big lights, so it was pretty dark out on Greene Street, where we were building them, which I think was pretty difficult," Weston said. "We were trying to tie these ribbons through the chicken wire which was pretty difficult without a light."
After not participating last year, this was Alpha Gamma's return to the stage with their partnership and float design. Weston believed this would be their most memorable appearance yet. Because of this, she and the rest of Alpha Gamma and Theta Chi have put forth an effort to have their float be something worth looking for.
"The parade is really just the first kickoff to the whole weekend," Weston said. "Everyone that comes back to see ... if they are Alpha Gamma alum or Theta Chi alum they can be like 'there's my fraternity' or 'there's my sorority's float' and be proud of that."
Weston believes that homecoming is also a very important aspect of student life, from both a participating and a viewing aspect.
"Homecoming can kind of get a stigma of just being an alumni event, or more alum-oriented," Weston said. "But having the current students contribute in this way is a really great way to show off organizations, camaraderie and just overall teamwork and us teaming together."
This is not the only event Alpha Gamma and Theta Chi participated in this year, however. They also took part in Cocky's canned creations, and in doing so raised over 200 cans for donation.
"We raised over 200 cans and built a cocky statue out of them, which was really hard," Weston said. "The street goes inwards, so it doesn't stand up if you stack the cans, so our thing fell down a couple times, but that was really fun."
After three days of building, Alpha Gamma and Theta Chi's float was seen in the parade on Friday. Weston stated that she is hoping for next year's Homecoming to be an even bigger success than this year's, especially after how memorable this year has been.
The winner of this year's Homecoming Cup was Alpha Delta Pi and Phi Sigma Kappa. Despite this, Weston had said prior to the parade that whether or not her team won, she would be happy because of all the fun she had with her team along the way.
"This is kind of just like all of us, and its our idea and we're building it," Weston said. "I think that'll be really cool in the end to just see it ... and that satisfaction of 'I did that, and the community can see that now.'"