Pomping used to be a major event in Maryville during college homecoming, with both houses and floats featuring huge competitive displays that took hundreds of hours to build. Pomping now seems to be an endangered process.
Jokes
Here are a few jokes about the chaotic, finger-cramping reality of homecoming pomping:
- My fraternity brother tried to tell me that pomping builds character and brings the chapter closer together. I told him the only thing it’s bringing closer together is my thumb and index finger, which are currently superglued to a piece of chicken wire.
- You know you’ve survived Homecoming week when your fingers are permanently stained three different shades of school colors, and you can’t look at a box of Kleenex without experiencing a minor bout of PTSD.
- A freshman asked me how long it takes to build a competitive homecoming float. I told him it takes exactly three weeks, 150 man-hours, four packages of hot glue sticks, and the complete surrender of your academic GPA.
- I asked our float chairman what the structural engineering plan was for this year’s design. He handed me a wooden 2×4, a roll of rusty wire, and a pencil, and said, “Just start wrapping the tissue paper, man. We’ll figure out gravity later.”
- The university’s sustainability committee asked us if our homecoming float was recyclable. I told them that after we finish gluing 5,000 napkins to a wire frame, the only thing we’re recycling is the same playlist of 2000s throwbacks to keep the freshman shift awake at 3:00 AM.
- Our float chairman looked at the half-finished frame at 2:00 AM and said, “Don’t worry, guys, the parade doesn’t start for another seven hours.” I haven’t seen a mathematical miscalculation that catastrophic since my last calculus midterm.
- You haven’t truly experienced college until you are standing in a freezing garage at 4:30 AM, drinking lukewarm energy drinks, and trying to explain to a freshman that the left wing of the mascot’s mascot requires exactly 400 more blue napkins or the entire structural integrity fails.
- At 3:00 AM, the assembly line stopped because we ran out of tissue paper. Half the chapter wanted to make a run to the 24-hour store, and the other half was seriously calculating if the parade judges would notice if we finished the mascot’s tail using leftover Taco Bell wrappers.
- The transition from “We are definitely winning first place this year” at 9:00 PM to “If this wood glue holds out for three miles, it’s a miracle from above” at 6:00 AM is the ultimate emotional rollercoaster of Homecoming week.
- I told my professor I couldn’t turn in my Friday morning assignment because I was trapped in a captive labor force stuffing tissue paper into chicken wire. She didn’t believe me, even though I walked into the lecture hall with neon-green fingers and hot-glue strings still hanging off my jacket.
MIAA Pomping
Within the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association (MIAA) conference, traditional pomping is an endangered species, but Northwest Missouri State is not entirely alone in keeping it alive.
The competitive landscape varies widely across the conference:
Southeast Missouri State (SEMO) — Former MIAA Member
- The Tradition: While they left the MIAA in 1991, Southeast Missouri State University remains one of the strongest regional practitioners of pomping in Missouri.
- The Style: Their Greek Life organizations still actively use the classic technique of rolling and gluing tissue paper to create high-detail, thematic boards and full parade floats every fall.
University of Central Missouri (UCM) & Pittsburg State
- The Shift: Historically, rival schools like the Central Missouri Mules and Pittsburg State Gorillas boasted massive Greek float building competitions.
- The Reality: Today, most other active MIAA schools have transitioned away from grueling, full-scale 3D chicken-wire pomping for their main parades. While student organizations still build plenty of creative, spirited floats, they rely primarily on rapid decorating techniques—such as utilizing pre-made plastic fringe, spray-painted plywood silhouettes, balloon arches, and custom vinyl wraps—rather than logging 150 hours stuffing individual tissue squares.
Emporia State, Washburn, & Fort Hays State
- The Focus: At these institutions, the competitive focus for student organizations has largely shifted away from heavy structural building to maximize student participation in other ways. Banners, campus-wide field day games, philanthropic flash mobs, and decorated flatbed trucks or golf carts have replaced the intensive “pomp house” system.
SEC and Big 12
Despite the national decline, pomping is treated as an untouchable, multi-million-dollar competitive season at major football schools—particularly across the SEC and Big 12—as well as deeply traditional mid-sized regional universities like Northwest Missouri State.
Major hubs keeping the tradition alive include:
- The University of Alabama: Sororities here construct massive, highly detailed multi-story lawn murals called “house decks” rather than floats. Every member is required to log extensive shifts during “Pomp Week” to finish the sprawling tissue-paper masterpieces.
- Auburn University: Chapters routinely pair up to craft life-sized, moving trailers using rolled tissue paper or ripped streamers to create high-concept parade entry designs.
- Oklahoma State University & University of Tennessee: These campuses maintain incredibly strict committee rulebooks and sizing guidelines governing how paired Greek organizations construct and present their massive 3D floats.
- Mizzou & LSU: Schools like the University of Missouri and Louisiana State University continue to see their Greek lawns packed with vibrant, student-made pomping displays every single autumn.
Why It Is Fading Nationally
At a broader national level, pomping has seen a steep decline over the last few decades. Former students frequently reflect on platforms like Facebook that their past homecoming float competitions were significantly larger and more serious than what current student bodies produce. Several systemic shifts explain why the art is disappearing: [1]
- The “Time Tax”: Modern college students are less willing (or able) to commit 10 to 20 mandatory weekly hours to stuffing tissue paper into wire, leading many student governments to phase out the requirement. [1, 2]
- Greek Life Regulations: Nationally, Greek life has faced stricter administrative constraints. Many universities ban late-night off-campus builds over safety and liability concerns surrounding tools, temporary structures, and sleep deprivation.
- Environmental & Waste Policies: Disposing of massive chicken-wire structures coated in thousands of pieces of glued, soggy tissue paper creates significant environmental footprint concerns that clash with modern green-campus initiatives.
Pomping Process
Pomping is a traditional decorating technique used primarily by college fraternities and sororities to build vibrant, three-dimensional parade floats and displays.
It involves taking thousands of small squares of colored tissue paper or napkins, wrapping them around the end of a tool (like a pencil), dipping them in glue, and stuffing them tightly into a wire mesh frame.
How the Process Works
- The Frame: Students construct a base using wood or metal and wrap it entirely in chicken wire.
- The Layout: The design or picture is sketched or spray-painted directly onto the chicken wire as a guide.
- The Pomping: Builders place a square of tissue paper over a finger or a pencil eraser to form a small “pom,” apply a dab of liquid glue, and push it into a single hole in the chicken wire.
- The Texture: When thousands of these tissue poms are packed closely together, they create a dense, colorful, carpet-like texture that conceals the frame and allows for complex 3D shading and shapes.
Why It Became a Homecoming Tradition
- Affordability: In the 1920s and 1930s, tissue paper and chicken wire were incredibly cheap materials for cash-strapped student groups.
- Massive Labor Force: Because pomping requires hundreds of hours of repetitive work, it has become a major bonding ritual for Greek life chapters, with dozens of members working in shifts late into the night.
If you are researching the build process, I can give you details on how many man-hours it typically takes to finish a float or what alternative materials groups use today.
Labor Requirements: The Human Cost of a Float
A single competitive Homecoming float at Northwest Missouri State University generally demands between 100 and 200 total man-hours to complete.
Because the process is so tedious, Greek chapters rely on specific logistical strategies to get the job done:
- The Labor Force: Chapters pair up (typically one fraternity and one sorority) to pool together a combined workforce of 20 to 50 students.
- The “Pomp House” Shifts: Work is broken down into mandatory late-night shifts in off-campus garages or warehouses (often dubbed “pomp houses”).
- The Assembly Line: To maximize speed, students divide into roles: some cut the tissue paper into perfect 2×2 or 3×3-inch squares, some sketch the design patterns onto the chicken wire, and the rest handle the actual stuffing and gluing.
Modern Materials: Evolutions in Pomping
While classic tissue paper and liquid Elmer’s glue remain the historical standard, modern campus groups have adopted several alternatives to save time, save money, or weatherproof their designs:
- Plastic Pomps: Instead of tissue paper, many chapters now purchase pre-cut, weather-resistant plastic squares. If it rains on parade day, plastic pomps won’t bleed colors, droop, or disintegrate like traditional paper does.
- Vinyl Floral Foil: For large background areas, groups sometimes skip individual poms entirely and weave metallic or vinyl fringe foil through the fence wire to create a high-gloss, shimmering texture.
- Tissue Festooning: This is a pre-made garland of ruffled tissue paper. Instead of stuffing individual holes, students can rapidly wrap or glue entire rows of festooning across flat surfaces to mimic the look of traditional pomping in a fraction of the time.
- Spray Paint Hacks: To avoid buying 30 different shades of tissue paper, students will often pomp large sections using solid white paper or napkins and then use spray paint to add intricate shading, gradients, and fine details afterward.
Background
The word “pomping”comes from the noun “pomp” (or “pomps”), which was the historical name given to the pre-cut squares of tissue paper manufactured specifically for parade floats. [1, 2]
The term traces its linguistic roots back to two main sources:
The Shortening of “Pom-Poms”
The most direct reason the paper squares were named “pomps” is because once they were wrapped around a finger or pencil, stuffed into wire, and fluffed out, the finished texture closely resembled a fluffy pom-pom. Early manufacturers and students shortened “pom-pom decoration” down to just “pomp,” which naturally turned into the verb “to pomp” and the activity “pomping”. [1, 2, 3]
The Etymology of “Pomp and Circumstance”
The word “pomp” itself has ancient roots, coming from the Greek word pompe, meaning “a solemn procession” or “display.” By the time it evolved into English, “pomp” came to mean a grand, magnificent, or showy display (as in the phrase “pomp and circumstance”). Because homecoming parades were the ultimate grand display of school spirit and pageantry, naming the foundational decoration material a “pomp” was a perfect double entendre.
Regional Variations Today
While the origin of the word is universal to parade culture, the exact definition shifted across colleges: [1]
- In the Midwest (like Oklahoma State University), “pomping” specifically means poking tissue paper into chicken wire.
- In parts of the South (like the University of Alabama), the technique evolved so that “pomping” means rolling the tissue paper into tight balls and gluing them flat onto massive wooden boards called “house decks”.