As the third annual fake homecoming approached London this Saturday September 29, as Broughdale Avenue was filled with students.
Fake homecoming began in 2016 as a protest against Western’s administration. The hope of administrators was to move Westerns homecoming date from late September to late October to minimize partying due to weather conditions. Since then, students had created a fake event known as FOCO, which has only increased the amount of safety risks.
In the past years, both fake homecoming and homecoming attract thousands of people. Parties often grow too big causing the required visit of police and paramedics.
The Aftermath
Even though the reckless culture around homecoming has become a well known tradition that will most likely stay permanent, there are many negative end results. The results often reflect onto the locals, who then have to deal with the aftermath twice.
The small economic boost turns out to be insignificant since the negative impacts end up overpowering the good.
Darren Chapman, professor of economics at Fanshawe College explains “there is the clean up, there is getting back to the regular flow and so on, so like everything else there’s good and not so good things that come out of every event”.
He also adds how it effects our classrooms too. Since students party aggressively, they often miss class or show up a little bit drunk; impacting the lessons.
Course of action
London feeling the impacts of two homecomings is unnecessary. Students don’t want to feel as if they’re having homecoming taken away from them, they have expressed this intensely by creating the fake homecoming.
During this season, London students want to have the right to party without the stress of exams. Pushing back the date as created a new reason for students to party, rather than decreasing numbers.
Moving the original homecoming date would take away the need for the fake homecoming, and leave students satisfied with one date rather than two.
