This year marks the 100th anniversary of Eastern’s Homecoming, and one of the events kicking off the week is the coronation of Eastern’s Homecoming King, Queen, Prince and Princess.

The coronation event starts at 7 p.m. in McAfee Gym and those students who are nominated for court royalty will reign through Eastern’s Homecoming festivities.

Alexis Lambert, one the co-coordinators for the Homecoming committee, said the coronation of Homecoming royalty is very similar to how it is run in most high schools.

“We are electing a royal court to our entire university,” Lambert said. “We expect for them to help increase awareness of Eastern Illinois University and help pump up the school spirit that we are having for the year as a whole, but especially during the week.”

Lambert said even after some mishaps with students voting for who should be a member of the royal court, the final outcome had no negative impact.

“Actually a lot of students were afraid, and not just students, but the candidates were afraid that it was going to affect the outcome of the results for the Homecoming campaign,” Lambert said.

Lambert said student votes that were not counted received another email saying their vote was not counted and they would have to revote.

The overall theme for Homecoming is celebrating the 100 years the event has had at Eastern.

“The official theme is ‘100 never looked so good,’ but something that we did decide to do is do a decade a day,” Lambert said. “For each day, there will be a different decade.”

Lambert said the coronation will be a “Roarin’ ‘20s” theme.

Nathan Wehr, the interim assistant director of student life, said throughout the week, each day is going to be focusing on a different decade.

“Tuesday is the 1930s to 1940s, Wednesday is 1950s to 1960s and Thursday is 1970s to 1980s,” Wehr said. “That’s why ‘90s are Friday and on Saturday, we’re bringing it back all 100 years of coming home, past and present for the parade.”

Wehr said many of the student groups on campus picked a specific year that was important to them for the parade.

“This year, we will have them in order for the parade of starting from the earliest to the present day,” Wehr said. “That’s going to be something really neat this year for the parade.”

Homecoming starts with the sidewalk parties at 11 a.m. in the Library Quad.

Luis Martinez can be reached at 581-2812 or lpmartinez@eiu.edu