Two staples of Tufts' academic calendar, Parents' Weekend and Homecoming, will share the same weekend next year.
According to a press release from the Office of Alumni Relations, both events will be held concurrently from Oct. 14 to Oct. 16. Traditionally, each event was held on a separate weekend in October.
Last year, for example, Parents' Weekend was the third weekend of October, while Homecoming was the first weekend of that month.
Associate Director of Alumni Relations Tom Williams said that a "scheduling anomaly" was the driving force behind the sudden change in next year's academic calendar.
Director of Alumni Relations Tim Brooks said that Alumni Relations and the Parents Program have been working on combining both events since late January.
He said that the change was first proposed when Bill Gehling, Director of Athletics, approached him with a conundrum earlier in the year.
"Next year's calendar showed only one Saturday in October where all athletics games were home, and that fell on the exact weekend we had already selected to be Parents' Weekend," Brooks said.
Although initially Alumni Relations and the Athletics Department considered simply switching the two dates around, weather played a prominent role in shaping a weekend of simultaneous activities.
"It's awful to have Parents' Weekend the last weekend in October anyway, because it always invariably rains," Parents Program Director Jessica Papatolicas said.
Papatolicas said that heavy rains have plagued Parents' Weekend for years - a phenomenon that Williams jokingly attributed to the "Curse of the Jumbino."
He said that in the past, Tufts would bring a live elephant to campus for Parents' Weekend, and that one year the animal died at Tufts. "Ever since that day," Williams said, "Parents' Weekend has invariably had terrible weather."
"Weather plays such a huge impact" on these events, Brooks said. "We want to put our best foot forward for the parents, and leave them with the best of memories [of Tufts]."
"We need to show parents that they've made the right choice by sending their children to Tufts, and even two weeks in New England can mean all the difference in terms of weather," Brooks said.
Brooks said that combining both events into a single weekend was a complicated undertaking that directly involved a variety of offices on campus. According to Brooks, Alumni Relations, the Parents Program, the Athletics Departments, Facilities, the Dean of Students Office and the President's Office all had to combine their schedules to fit into a single weekend.
"We've seen an incredible level of cooperation on all levels for this effort," Brooks said. "There are some tight timing issues, but it should run smoothly."
Williams said University President Larry Bacow's tight speech and attendance schedule was an example of the issues needed to be taken into consideration.
Brooks said that student groups-both athletic and performance-would most likely benefit from combining both events into a single weekend.
"Athletes especially have the added advantage of performing at home in front of the school, their parents and alumni," he said. "Gehling made it clear from the start that athletes must have home games during Homecoming, and that weekend was the only one that could fit those needs."
But some students are less than enthusiastic about the change.
Senior Chris Kidd, a current member of Tufts' singing group the Beelzebubs, said he believes that having both parents and alumni attending their concerts will most likely "cheapen the experience."
"I personally think it's a bad idea," Kidd said. "Homecoming is an event where a lot of alumni come back, and many organizations, such as the Bubs and the [Amalgamates] have a lot of former members come back and stick around all weekend."
The influx of parents on top of alumni, Kidd said, will result in a more diluted experience for all those involved.
Nevertheless, Papatolicas is optimistic that, despite the gargantuan task of synchronizing the weekend's events, such a program may be a blessing in disguise for the University.
"Although we'll all be working double-time that weekend, it may actually be easier on us to consolidate both events into a single time frame," Papatolicas said.
Furthermore, hosting both events simultaneously should effectively double the budget for that weekend, which Brooks said was a "very generous amount from the University."
Brooks said that by combining both events, more money can be spent jointly on each event since they will, by and large, be sharing the same time and space.
New costs for the weekend, especially as a result of parking issues, have already been foreseen, Brooks said. "We will probably incur expenditures like trolleys to compensate for a parking shortage near the event sites," Brooks said.
"There are only about 110 car spots for the Homecoming events," Williams said. "Those will be pre-sold to alumni only."
Brooks said he hopes that the combination of both events will increase school spirit. "We're still working on perfecting the formula for the same amount of school spirit that we see at other schools, and hopefully [combining both events] will be a step towards that," Brooks said.
He added that various other schools around the country have combined their Parents' Weekend with Homecoming, with great success.
Boston University, American University and George Washington University, for example, combine both events annually.
It is unclear, however, how certain student habits typically associated with Homecoming will mesh with the atmosphere of Parents' Weekend.
Alcohol, for example, is commonly consumed during the Homecoming games at tailgate parties. That behavior will most likely be curbed to a greater degree next year than in previous years.
Papatolicas expressed faith in the student body's ability to act in a mature fashion. "I hope and trust that because parents and alumni will be present that students will modify their behavior," she said.
Brooks added that although in the past few years there have been a few isolated incidents of public drunkenness at Homecoming, the administration "has never needed to worry about implementing stricter measures because, by and large, students act like adults," he said.
Although it is yet to be determined how parents, alumni and students will react to this new schedule, Brooks said that next year does not necessarily mark the beginning of a new custom at Tufts.
"We all agreed that this [combination] is not a new tradition," Brooks said. "It happened because of a scheduling anomaly, and we'll decide later next year whether or not to revert to the old schedule."
