Mesa Legend - Features - Homecoming 2006 - Tailgating, football and royalty excite the MCC campuses

Homecoming 2006 - Tailgating, football and royalty excite the MCC campuses

Jordan Currier
Mesa Legend

Campus royalty isn’t a phenomenon only limited to high school. That tradition is alive and well in college culture.

Except now the dreaded popularity campaigns that produced high school royalty have evolved into a more sophisticated lobby of promoting a candidate’s commitment to community service and academic achievement.

Indeed, the search for MCC’s Homecoming King and Queen was a quiet affair, as only 446 students out of MCC’s bustling 25,000 student body voted for Homecoming royalty on Nov. 1.

Voters fielded eight candidates and elected MCC students Robb Webb and Cassandra Tautimez as Homecoming King and Queen.

Tautimez’s desire to promote school spirit is demonstrated by her membership on the MCC cheer squad.

“Before I was in cheer, school was just school,” Tautimez said. “Now that I’m in cheer, I want to be at school and I want to let everybody know that it’s fun to have school spirit and to be involved.”

Tautimez, who volunteers regularly in the community, lays to rest any theories that popularity won her the crown- she doesn’t attend a single class at MCC’s Southern and Dobson campus where the election was held.

Webb, an engineering major and MCC ambassador, admits that the Associated Students of Mesa Community College- the sole entity responsible for organizing MCC’s Homecoming festivities- talked him into running for King.

Webb, who has volunteered his time for the Special Olympics and ASMCC, takes his roles of MCC ambassador and Homecoming King seriously.

Above all, he wants to be a role-model in a junior college district that has been rocked by scandal.

“This is a way to show that we are a good school, that we support our school,” Webb said.

“Having homecoming in college is a great idea because it shows school spirit, and it gives students a lot of purpose to go into school. Not very many students have much school spirit, as opposed to ASU or the other universities.”

“You only have one chance,” Tautimez warned. “When you get older you’ll have a family and other responsibilities. So it’s fun to be involved in as many things as you can be involved in right now .”