Photo courtesy sag.famu.edu
Natalie Antenor, a third-year accounting student, serves as the Student Body Vice President for the 2019-2020 academic year.
One of Antenor’s main duties as the Vice President is to plan the homecoming for the alumni and student body. Each year, the Vice President selects a few students from the student body to help coordinate and plan out the events for the week.
When asked how she went about choosing her committee Antenor stated that she wanted to select students who have gained experience with planning their specific events in other clubs, organizations, or student leadership positions outside of Student Government.
“I wanted the committee to be truly a student-led committee. Within my jurisdiction, I created more positions to specialize various areas of planning that I feel deserve more attention. I requested for each applicant to submit what I called a ‘leadership letter’ that requested for the recommender to describe a time where the student was involved in a certain situation which allowed me to see how each applicant would contribute to the committee as a whole,” said Antenor.
The committee was chosen back in early June and began meeting throughout the summer to plan for this upcoming homecoming.
While prepping for homecoming, the student body often expressed their opinions on who they would like to see during this year’s homecoming.
Alexis Ethridge, a fourth-year psychology student, serves as one of the committee’s event coordinators. She weighed in with her thoughts on some of the challenges the committee had to face.
“A lot of things that were done early on that I know leadership had good intentions or, ended up setting us a little behind. A challenge we also faced was the timing of homecoming and availability of our top choice artists being solidified… We experienced and mastered the ability to continue doing our job and advocating for the student body regardless of the negative feedback or early leaks of the lineup,” said Ethridge.
Vice President Antenor shared some of the biggest challenges she had to endure as well.
“The social media backlash after the rumors and releasing of the homecoming concert line up, the ultimate fear of displeasing our students, and working with a group of seasoned, tenured, and opinionated upperclassmen who questioned a lot of my decisions were a few of the challenges I had to face… I quickly had to learn that all of my goals and dreams weren’t feasible, and I had to snap into reality,” Antenor stated.
Taylor Young, a graduating Public Relations senior, serves at the homecoming committee co-chair and shared her thoughts of being on this year’s committee.
“It was hard. Some of the challenges we as a committee faced was ensuring that we all maintained following the processes that FAMU has for implanting events, but with the help of joint operations we were able to do so,” said Young.
Although coordinating homecoming was a bit of a task, Antenor with the help of her committee and faculty leads have successfully planned all the events for the week.
“We have a plethora of wonderful events for the student body to look forward to. This year we added new events such as Market Mondays which will take place on the quad and has a bunch of vendors for students to pick up some extra pieces to add to their wardrobe for the week. We also added the Beauty Expo, which will allow fashion, skincare, and beauticians to give out tips to the students and offer live tutorials,” said Antenor.
The entire Rattler community should expect a warm welcome to the highest of seven hills. To find out more information on events taking place during the week, please visit www.homecomingonthehill.com