Eastern’s Homecoming week officially began on Sunday and the theme this year is “Rock ‘n’ Roll, Pop ‘n’ Soul.”

Members of each residence hall used their creative juices during the weekend to finish creating window paintings with their own sub-theme to “Rock ‘n’ Roll, Pop ‘n’ Soul” to show their school spirit.

Hillary Rains, a junior secondary education major, helped lead the window-painting event at Andrews Hall, where she is a resident.

“Our theme is Dreamgirls, but we are partnering with Thomas Hall on some of the events,” Rains said. “Our Homecoming chair and resident directors helped come up with the theme.”

Rains said the group spent hours completing their Dreamgirls-themed window Thursday night while listening to music.

“It was a group of people that don’t usually do things like window painting,” Rains said. “But we ended up having a lot of fun.”

McKinney Hall went in a different direction for their window painting.

“Ours was a guitar theme, ‘Strike a chord in McKinney Hall,” said Corryn Moorman, a senior psychology major and resident of McKinney Hall.

“We thought of the idea during an exec board meeting, so I drew the design and we all agreed on it,” Moorman said.

The number of people painting the windows varied during the three-day period it took the residence hall to complete the artwork.

“There were usually five or six of us,” Moorman said, “And we rocked out to music for inspiration while we were painting.”

The Carman Hall council featured the “C-Town Showdown,” with the theme, “I’m with the band,” said Cheryl Beebe, a freshman elementary education major and resident of Carman Hall.

On Sunday night from 6 to 9 p.m., about eight people participated in decorating the lobby and windows of Carman Hall, not only with window paint, but also with colorful balloons and streamers.

“We had to stand on tables to hang the balloons and streamers,” Beebe said. “But it was difficult to do Sunday night because all the students were returning to school after the break this weekend and we were blocking some of the doors.”

The fraternities and sororities also took part in the school spirit for Homecoming.

Each organization created a spirit board with their own personal theme based off Eastern’s main Homecoming theme.

The fraternity and sorority spirit boards are spread across campus for others to see.

Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity chose the theme “80s Hair Bands.”

“The fraternity worked as a team to get the spirit board done,” said Collin Ingrum, a senior elementary education major.

The fraternity members thought it would be a fun theme to base Homecoming around.

“There was a lot of hard work put into it,” Ingrum said, “because we wanted to show a lot of school spirit for homecoming.”

Shelly White can be reached at 581-7942 or at slwhite@eiu.edu.

An Eastern student walks past the “Dreamgirls” themed painted window in Andrews Hall on Monday night. The windows of the residence halls were painted last week for this weekend’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll, Pop ‘n’ Soul” Homecoming.(Erin Matheny

(more…)