Countless food vendors, blasting music and vibrant conversations in the Howard Center parking lot have made up the famous tailgate for many years. For this year’s homecoming, however, that is no longer a part of the lineup.
A second day of Yardfest, called “Reunion Day,” will be on the schedule instead of the tailgate, which usually takes place on the same day as the football game. “Reunion Day” will be on The Yard under the Alumni Tent.
“The tailgate is not canceled, as we announced in 2022 and again in 2023 to the public and to our alums. We just don’t have the space any longer to host that event,” David Bennett, senior vice president for development and alumni relations, said.
Bennett said Howard does not exclusively control the Howard Center parking lot anymore, as it is now part of a joint venture with a company to develop housing and retail space for the surrounding community.
Cedric Mobley, the assistant vice president of strategic communications, said Howard’s development partners, Quadrangle and Capstone, have a ground lease for the lot to facilitate the construction of their project.
Initially, Bennett said he believed 2022 would be the last year Howard could hold the tailgate in the parking lot, but the university was granted access in 2023, making it the final year it could be hosted there.
Kelli Jones, vice president of membership and engagement of the Howard University Alumni Association, explained how the tradition debuted.
“Tailgate started in October 2011, and the main purpose was to give alumni opportunity to fellowship with their classmates, celebrate reunions and respective D9 organizations for their line anniversaries,” Jones said.
David Oliver, ‘04 alum and director of track and field, described the tailgate as a “common area” post-graduation to reconnect with everybody you hadn’t seen in a long time.
Much of Howard’s community considered tailgate a useful opportunity for students and alumni to meet and bond over shared experiences and are sad to see the tradition go.
Andrea Pool, a sophomore health sciences major from St. Louis, said the absence of the tailgate would be hard to ignore. She considered it a convenient way to meet alumni and learn about their experiences and the different things they overcame while going to Howard.
“I know that with it being homecoming, there’ll be other opportunities for me to do that, but I’ll definitely miss being able to do that in one location specifically,” Pool said.
Jones explained that safety and overcrowding issues caused the accelerated ending of the tailgate.
“The intention was that tailgate was not going to be moving forward in the future. But, I think, because of the kind of things that happened last year, I think that just accelerated the shutdown,” she said.
In videos of last year’s event, students can be seen hopping gates to enter the tailgate. Many also reported issues of overcrowding.
“There was one point where the tailgate reached capacity, so I know there were some individuals who tried to jump over the fences to get inside the event, and then had different issues with security, like people who were arguing with security guards because they couldn’t get into the tailgate,” Pool said.
In place of the tailgate, numerous social activities have been planned as an “extension of Yardfest,” as described by Jay Jones, the 64th Howard University Student Association president.
“They’re going to be moving around certain vendors and certain people along those lines into new placements to essentially make it feel almost like an entire street festival vibe on 6th Street,” she said.
Bennett said multiple events, from a Divine Nine brunch on Friday morning to a wind down in Blackburn on Saturday evening and traditional alumni jazz brunches on Sunday, were added to the lineup.
Copy edited by Jalyn Lovelady
