This is “FOCO”, or fake-homecoming. In the last weekend of every September, Western
students flood Broughdale avenue in the thousands. It starts in the early morning in student
housing, and disperses out to the city at night. Last year, it was 11,000 people. This
is “HOCO”, or real homecoming, that takes place in October. Now if this photo was a
video, it would still be just as quiet. So how can this be the fake homecoming, if this
is the real one? Well, FOCO only came about in 2016. Before that, just had homecoming.
A homecoming is a chance for alumni to come home to their former school and celebrate
their school spirit. Western has been having homecoming as early as the 1950s. Our homecoming
is characterized by our big football game and all the programming Western has built
around it. It’s just that for many people, the reputation for homecoming has become the
reputation for HOCO. Less about the football game and its sanctioned programming, and more
about the Broughdale party and its unsanctioned activities. Fast-forward to 2015, at this
point Western’s official HOCO programming takes place on the same weekend as the unofficial
Broughdale party. That weekend, eight to ten thousand people swarm Broughdale. Now this
was the culmination of years of binge-drinking and trashing the streets and the school had
reached a boil. They announced in that summer, which was 2016, that the next year’s
HOCO would take place not in September but in mid-October. It would be colder, and it
would be at the height of midterm season. Now many people make these decisions but one
administrator became the face of this initiative: Amit Chakma,
the university’s president. In the press
release, Chakma said he was speaking “as Western’s president, and as a parent.”
Now as we know, many people go to university to avoid parents. And as people predicted
at the time, the partying did not stop. That September, on the original homecoming date,
10,000 students amassed on Broughdale for the newly-dubbed “FOCO”, fake-homecoming.
This was despite mass-emails sent by the administration to students, and despite letters sent by the
London Police to residents of Broughdale, warning them about the dangers of illegal street parties. At this point in
time it was clear that the Homecoming legacy had been split in two: there was the new date
with the sanctioned, official football game and its programming, and the old date with
the unsanctioned, unofficial street gathering. The next year, in 2017, FOCO surged to 11,000
people—10% higher than the year previous with a 1,000 person increase. And the event
attracted more 911 calls than the year previous. In total, 37 people were sent to hospital:
7 from traumatic injuries, 7 from drug overdoses, 2 from assaults, and 3 from people being hit
by cars. Police issued 8 arrests, 11 charges, 50 notices, and 969 warnings. Chakma was already
the face of what students felt they were rebelling against, but after that year’s festivities,
he became more forceful than ever before, and he defended the date switch on the CBC.
“But they will understand a bit better why they are with us. They’re at Western not
to party, they’re at Western to study. And—”
While the president believes that Homecoming is not a student event, FOCO’s popularity over the past years
has made clear that students feel otherwise.
Until this tension is resolved, FOCO and its relationship to the new date remains unclear.