One of the highlights of many student's semesters is Brick City Homecoming and Family Weekend. The first chance and opportunity that students have to see their parents in the eight weeks since school has started. The weekend consists of a number of events, alumni reunions, speaker series, and hockey games.
:Here's a brief overview of some of the events:
Golden Circle
The Golden Circle 50 Year Reunion is a large reception celebrating all of RIT's 50+ year alums. Since RIT's campus moved 48 years ago to its current location, many of these RIT alumni haven't even seen the brand "new" campus! The alumni toured the new campus, then attended a reception with food and a medaling ceremony to honor their 50th year reunion. We also had some older grads attend, some having graduated over 60 years ago!
Food Trucks
There were fun events for families this year, including a visit from some food trucks. Le Petit Poutine (this is a classic canadian treat!), a Greek Food Truck, and a "Healthy" food truck with salads were all in attendance.
Make a Tiger
Many enjoyed a Build-A-Bear style Make-A-Tiger featuring adorable tigers that you could stuff yourself! They even came with little RIT Brick City Homecoming t-shirts.
Paint Night
The paint night event was an event where families could go and follow a "Painting with a Twist" style painting activity, learning how to paint landscapes on a record. There were two very full sessions of this fun family-bonding event!
Dueling Pianos
A personal favorite of mine was Dueling Pianos. This is a super-fun, audience led, high-energy show! This show features two pianists who can play virtually anything that is handed to them! From Disney songs, to Taylor Swift, to 18 Wheels on the Big Rig, to Queen, the night was full of tons of fun and audience participation! I highly recommend this show to EVERY RIT student, and they come every year for Brick City Homecoming.
Presidents' Alumni Ball
The Presidents' Alumni Ball is when the RIT community and alumni gather to honor the Outstanding Alumnus of the Year, and RIT's Volunteer of the Year. While this event is mainly open to alumni, many times, students will get invited by their academic department to attend the ball. The ball is a fantastic event with a 360º camera, arcade games, presentations and displays by students, a fancy dinner, and of course, the awards ceremony!
Pumpkin Chunkin'
A showcase of what Engineering Technology students have been working on this semester, Pumpkin Chunkin' is an event to see how far teams can "chunk" pumpkins across the lawn. From catapults to slingshots, this is a fun event to drop by!
Presidents' Address to the Community
On Saturday morning, President Destler gives an address to the RIT community, highlighting the major accomplishments of RIT over the past year, and highlighting goals for the future. This year was a particularly meaningful year, as this is President Destler's last year as President of RIT.
Zootopia
Have you seen the Disney movie Zootopia? Well, an RIT grad was actually heavily involved with the creation of that movie, and there were special screenings of the movie with a post-movie Q&A from the RIT grad that made a lot of it happen!
Horton Speaker
Every year, Student Government hosts the Horton Speaker series on campus. This brings in a distinguished speaker to speak about their experience. This year, the Horton Speaker was Brandon Stanton, Founder of the popular blog, Humans of New York. With over 20 million followers on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, Brandon tells the stories of humans in NY, shedding light on their delights and struggles. He was a fascinating person to meet and learn from!
Hockey Games
You can’t forget about the hockey games! A staple of the Brick City Homecoming weekend, the hockey games bring the RIT community together. This year, the women's hockey team played on Friday and Saturday on RIT's campus in the Gene Polisseni Center. On Saturday evening, the men's hockey team played downtown in Blue Cross Arena, to a sold out crowd of over 10,000 people!
It was a great weekend! So many fun events, and next year will offer the same number of awesome events for members and friends of the RIT community.