Sadly I don’t know yet :)
As many of you have seen, the ACC football schedule was released today. A lot of you are asking my office (and other offices on campus) When is Family Weekend? And much as I’d love to give you a date right this second, I don’t have it yet. Bear with me as I explain why.
Once the football schedule is released, a small army of administrators from various campus offices gets together to gather intel and works towards making the best decision possible. There are lots of considerations:
It needs to be a home game. Ideally, it needs to be a home game where the opposing team isn’t one that travels well and will buy up way more tickets than our side.
We need to make sure there are enough hotel rooms. That includes trying to ascertain other area schools’ Homecomings and making sure there are no major conferences or festivals in town. It can take a while to hear back from hotels on their projected occupancy.
On that point, we have to be sure not to schedule during Furniture Market, which although it is in High Point (30ish minutes away), it is a major international event that typically claims all the rooms in the Triad.
We have to balance the needs of Homecoming, Family Weekend, and Unrivaled – which are three major events each fall. Each of these events has different scheduling needs in terms of Friday vs. Saturday events, which makes some weekends better than others for certain events.
We also have to weigh dates with the academic calendar: when is Move-In, Fall Break, Thanksgiving break. To the degree that we can avoid the Carolina Classic Fair (fka Dixie Classic Fair) we try to, as that impacts parking for the football game.
Speaking of Thanksgiving, when are known national holidays or high holy days that would prohibit an event weekend?
We have to think about the weather. What would be too hot? Too cold? Likelihood of rain (and for the P’20s in the crowd, you remember a couple of years in a row where the remnants of hurricanes soaked us).
If all of that sounds like a lot all at once, I can promise you it is.
And the reality is that in most years, there are compromises and sacrifices that have to be made. Sometimes the ideal weekend from a scheduling perspective means no hotels. Or is too close to Move-In. Or is on Halloween. We know there is no date that will be universally loved by all, but we try our best given the constraints we have.
Our hope is that we will know something on Friday, but no promises. As soon as we have a solid date, we will publicize in all our regular channels. Thanks for your patience until then, and know we look forward to welcoming you all to campus for Family Weekend 2020!
Finally, for all our P’24s who are with us Early Decision, wanted to draw your attention to an email that went out first thing this morning.
— by Betsy Chapman, Ph.D. (’92, MA ’94)