The ROARlty coronation ceremony will kick off homecoming week at 7 p.m. Oct. 16 in the McAfee Gym.

The coronation will involve the crowning of Homecoming King and Queen, Prince and Princess, as well as Faculty King and Queen and Lil’ Prince and Princess.

The nomination and choosing process differs for each of those spots, Ishmael Williams said.

The process for homecoming king and queen and prince and princess are the same, with both having an application, an interview and voting to determine who wins.

The interview process happened over the weekend, with candidates being asked questions, many pertaining to the spirit of Eastern, with the scoring of said interviews accounting for 60 percent of their entire score.

The only difference between the king and queen and the prince and princess are the age groups: prince and princess are underclassmen where as king and queen are upperclassmen.

To start the coronation process, potential nominees are nominated by their RSO and have to reach certain academic standing requirements.

The only requirement is that nominees are on campus, full-time students.

Coronation chair Allorah Miles-L’Hote said a focus for the committee this year was to step away from the stigma that involved persons must be affiliated with Greek life.

“Homecoming has always been really known as a Greek sort of thing, and so our goal as the homecoming committee this year was to really break away from that and get the residence halls involved,” Miles-L’Hote said. “It’s showing that we, as a campus, as a whole, are coming together and supporting each other, regardless of if the candidates are running against each other or not.”

Faculty King and Queen are nominated by students who fill out an application explaining why their teacher should be elected.

Lil’ Prince and Princess are local children whose parents enter an application for and are used as a way to get the Charleston community involved.

Miles-L’Hote said another important aspect of homecoming is the spirit of togetherness that happens when students show up to support each other.

“I think students should come out to support, not only their organization, but the spirit of homecoming itself,” Miles-L’Hote said. “I think that bringing one of the key elements of Eastern and one of the reasons I decided to come to Eastern was the “homey” and spirited vibe of it, and I think that’s really important for a school to have.”

The ceremony itself differs from year to year in decoration and set-up, and they hope this brings students new and old out to the night’s ceremony, both Williams and Miles-L’Hote said.

Miles-L’Hote said the shared showing of school spirit brings the campus, and all those in it, closer together and more unified.

“It comes back to spirit, I think that’s a really important aspect of it, I think it bonds us closer together and, while we’re not a family, we are a ‘panther family’, and I think that’s important and I think that Eastern is one of those few schools that really has that aspect about it,” Miles-L’Hote said.

Brooke Schwartz can be reached at 581-2812 or bsschwartz@eiu.edu.