Purple Haze
So, who is it that's "coming home"?
By Lauren Bagian

Oct. 8, 2009

Northern’s homecoming festivities will begin on Friday, Oct. 9, at the Homecoming Football Game against Hershey, beginning with the announcement of Homecoming King and Queen. A trip to the South Seas is then planned for Saturday, Oct. 10, at the Homecoming Dance. I’ve heard that there are rumors of a 16-foot ship that is going to be erected in the student commons. If that isn’t enough to get you there then I really don’t know what is.

I never realized what the title of Homecoming meant until friends of mine graduated and then came back in the fall for the Homecoming Football Game and Homecoming Dance. I used to think, “Who’s coming home? We’re already here.”

But I now remember walking into the gym that has been covered in streamers, the bass from the DJ seeming to change the air pressure in the room constantly, during previous years and seeing students who graduated the year before who came back for the dance. It was always nice to see familiar faces and know that we were not forgotten here in Dillsburg and at Northern High School.

I have not experienced this feeling lately as fewer alumni come home and the new (and understandable) guest policy at school functions puts alumni in the same category as guests from other schools, so it is hard for alumni to come to the Homecoming Dance without being brought by a date. However, these are changes that had to take place for safety reasons and the farther graduated students’ colleges are from Dillsburg, the harder it is for them to come home for a weekend in the middle of October anyway. While these reasons for the lack of alumni at Homecoming are reasonable, I would hate for students that will come through the high school in the future to not know who’s supposed to be coming home.

If you are an alumni who’s reading this and for some reason you are home, please, come see your former classmates. There is something about seeing former students who went away to college come back and want to experience parts of high school that they may miss that provides current students with a tie to life outside of high school and unites the parts of the journey that we all must take after we walk across that stage in our caps and gowns. We will all take the same journey, just at different times, so don’t forget where you came from and don’t forget to come home.