On the week of October 13th, the Sigma Phi Epsilon Wisconsin Theta chapter participated in the UW-Platteville homecoming activities. Our chapter again worked together with the sorority Theta Phi Alpha; we were all very excited to be working with them again. The week began with a win from our volleyball team where they went undefeated in the tournament. Later that evening we presented our banner that we had painted in the previous week. The banner depicted a spinoff of the Beatles album cover Abbey Road. Our banner instead had UW-Platteville’s mascot, Pioneer Pete, in place for Ringo Starr, walking with the other Beatles across a cross walk. In the background you can see the famed “World’s Largest ‘M’”, a popular landmark in Platteville and the largest in the world.
On Monday, we participated in trivia. The topics ranged from Platteville history to pop culture. The questions proved to be difficult for our team and we did not place. On Tuesday, we competed in the Tug of War. The conditions were muddy and we brought the strongest men in our chapter. We came out to try to regain some points, however, we lost. We may have not done the best, but our spirits were not broken! Wednesday night was the volleyball game where UW-Platteville took on the University of Dubuque’s Spartans. The volleyball game’s theme was connected to the homecoming event “Yell like Hell”. Several of us showed our spirit by painting our faces with orange and blue paint to show support for our school. The Theta Phi Alpha girls and us also wore our respective letters and brought our chapters flags to wave with such spirit! The fraternities and sororities lead their chants and cheers making the game more involved with the crows. The girls’ volleyball team pulled out a win in the 5th set giving the overall score a 3-2 win.
Thursday led off with the variety show. The variety show is a lip-sync based competition of various songs and dancing put on by the participants. Our mini theme was chosen to be Boy bands through the years which featured songs from well-known boy bands over the past century such as: the Beatles, the Backstreet boys, Big Time Rush, One Direction and the Jonas Brothers. We practiced the whole week to prepare for the show. The performance went on with minimal errors and great effort by the whole team. We placed second just narrowly missing first place. On Friday, we presented our House Decorations. Since the theme this year was “Pioneering music through the years” we thought outside the box and decided to make our house decorations themed on Wheel of Fortune. We painted large plywood board that represented word board and even made a working wheel that spun like the one in the show. For our contestants, we had a line up of music celebrities and the phrase they were competing to complete was “Pioneering Through the Years”. Finally, to cap it all off we had the parade, throughout the week many of our brothers constructed a wooden structure for the float and then on Friday evening we added chicken wire and added the tissue paper pomps. Our float depicted a DJ booth with large speakers and a “Pimp Throne” The DJ booth featured two large disks that rotated on lazy Susan’s. Alumni Jeremy Baker towed the float with his truck and allowed us to use his generator to power the speakers and smoke machines resting on the floats. The large speakers played music while had the parade. Our float placed second in the parade narrowly missing first place.
Immediately following the parade, we had our annual Lamb Roast where our new advisor Chef Jon Peavy aided us in cooking and preparing the lamb. There was a great turn out of current members and alumni. It was a great time to get together and relax after a hard week of working diligently. For the last event of homecoming, we had the torch relay where torches are ran to the M. When the torches arrived, the M was then lit on fire and fireworks are launched. Overall, our chapter placed forth in the Homecoming activities. Just you wait, next year we’ll be leading homecoming once again!