It's that time of year again....Happy Homecoming LSU! And every sorority girl on campus knows exactly what that means. It's Pomping Week. For those of you who don't know, let me share with you exactly a pomp, pomps, and pomping, is.
Every year for homecoming, at colleges across the US, sororities take part in this tradition, working all week on huge pieces of artwork demonstrating school spirit. The art can vary from 3D objects to arches to giant boards, (Tridelta even made a Ferris Wheel this year!) but it all has one thing in common, the art is made entirely of pomps.
A pomp is made by rolling a square piece of colored tissue paper into a very tight little ball. The pomps are then glued to the board/object, and by using different colors, an image of absolute school spirit emergeges. Why not just paint signs? Because what is the fun in that anyway? We're not painting signs for our high school football team anymore. This is serious.
Each girl in a sorority is expected to complete anywhere from 6-20 hours of pomping during the week prior to homecoming. This massive job needs literally hundreds of working hands. As easy as it is to complain about the time commitment, among all of the other schoolwork/jobs/social life that we as college students must attend to, the truth is that we all secretly love Pomping Week.
You see, it forces us to escape these other obligations and just sit and enjoy our sisters' company. People in your sorority that you never see, you will see at pomping. It truly is a bonding experience as we all work towards the same goal-First Place Lawn on Homecoming Day!
The Tridelta Homecoming Committee does a wonderful job of making this week as fun as possible. They provided us with "pomping snacks", music, and we even made a movie night out of it once!
The greatest part about pomping goes right along with one of the things I love most about being in a sorority: the ability to combine your own small efforts with those of 300 others, and create something massive and memorable. There's nothing like the pride you feel seeing the completed work gracing your lawn on Homecoming Day, the weeklong hard work of you and your 300 sisters. The excitement of seeing everyone else's hard work as well contributes to that familiar feeling of spirit and pride that comes from being a student here at LSU.
