By Robert Bailey, February 7, 2019 — I made my way back to Homecoming two weekends past. This was among many returns of the last couple of years. I used to return regularly but stopped a number of years ago because most of my classmates did not return and true to form there were no class of ’73 returnees that I knew of last weekend.
Homecomings at Lincoln University have evolved to a point of being nearly unrecognizable to us older heads. There is a football game, something we did not enjoy at Lincoln until the last ten years or so because the football team had gone defunct in the early 60’s. We are more in line with every other HBCU at long last right down to the terrible God-awful losing football games at homecoming.
What appears to be unique and distinctly contemporary Lincoln is the festivities at the “plots.” Every social organization has a small plot of grass in the middle of the campus that they brightly decorate in their organizational colors and symbols.
During the course of Homecoming Saturday afternoon, the organizations (mostly Greeks) gather at their respective plots drink, cookout and party. There is, of course, a centrally located D. J. blasting music.
The crowds explode after the games and the festivities whip into a youthful hormonal frantic frenzy, but to the young people’s credit there are none of the drunks staggering my generation produced in similar circumstances.
The organizations gathered in and around their respective gaily decorated plots. Pink and green, blue and white, purple and gold, and of course crimson and cream; all interwoven, milling and meandering in the aimless resolve that only the young can achieve.
There was a chill in the air; a slight chill, a familiar chill of Lincoln in back woods and farm land Southern Pennsylvania, cooler still than Philadelphia. I had dressed appropriately; my sweat suit was just warm enough to protect me against the rural chill. My four-year education had at least taught me how to dress for Lincoln.
In the middle of the loose conglomeration of plots was a grassy square strategically located in front of the D.J. I was too engaged in the exhilaration of the moment – the emotional mix of nostalgia, loss and existential intoxication of youth that the young people exude to be annoyed by the insistent blast of Rap music and Hip Hop stampeding from the emcee’s speakers.
Caught up by the rhythms, the fraternities and sororities stepped to the beats. I was able to sublimate to their extropies.