Samford’s 2023 Homecoming Quad Party brought food and free entertainment to students, faculty and alumni celebrating the week-long campus event. The event was also an opportunity for those with different backgrounds to come together on campus.
Kid-friendly activities like carnival games and inflatable slides were stationed on the quad. The food trucks parked around Ben Brown included Eugene’s Hot Chicken, Doodle’s, Pazzo Big Slice Pizza, Full Moon Bar-B-Que and the 3-year-old DogNation truck of The Dog Doctor.
Owner Stan Tippins is “The Dog Doctor” himself. His business serves Samford as well as Shelby County.
“I have a Ph.D. in ‘meat-ology,’ ‘smoke-ology,’ and criminology,” says Tippins. “I only got the degree in criminology because if you don’t cook your meat like we do, it’s a crime.”
The local truck has been serving at Samford events for two years.
“We have a great time over at the football field. Every home game we’re here,” Tippins said.
DogNation began three years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tippins saw a need for social interaction amongst people cooped up at home all day and did his best to provide that for his customers.
“I said, ‘Hey, this is the perfect time to do this,’ so we started serving in neighborhoods,” he said. “Entire families would come up and eat from us. A lot of those people who were homebound, not having the ability to go to the office, started calling us once COVID was up. And that’s grown into what we have now.”
JAMM Entertainment Services is another local business that took part in the Quad Party. Employee Katie Edwards as well as president and owner Geoff Carlisle helped create the fun ambience with café lights and music.
Edwards, who has been part of the events industry for fifteen years, has been a part of various Samford events through JAMM, including SGA’s Welcome Back Week foam party as a DJ.
“For when the kids come in later, I added ‘Church Clap’ and a lot of Taylor Swift… I’ll add six Taylor Swift songs and that’s it; that’s all you get,” she said.
Along with the music, attendees like Margaret and Bradley Pate’s family enjoyed the several inflatable slides and jump-houses.
“The kids remembered it [from last year],” says Margaret Pate, “and they were like, ‘We’re going back again!’”
Bradley Pate is a Samford alumnus. He played golf for the Bulldogs as an undergraduate and continued into McWhorter School of Pharmacy, where he met Margaret Pate.
“We stuck around in the Birmingham area, so we come back to all the activities, and we’ll actually be back Monday [Oct. 30] for the baseball Halloween game,” Bradley Pate said.
Alumnus Elizabeth from the class of 1975 also enjoyed Homecoming week after traveling from Kentucky. She recalls experiencing homesickness and enjoyment when she moved into Vail freshman year.
“When I came here, it was a distance,” says Elizabeth. “It was probably about 350 miles. I can remember being homesick. I didn’t have a car, so I wasn’t coming home until Thanksgiving, and fall break was a completely novel idea. And I remember marking those days off, anxious to go home, but I didn’t think about going anywhere else for school or transferring closer to home. I loved being here.”
The 2023 Homecoming Quad Party was a collection of local businesses and alumni who were all connected to Samford. The evening was a special time for people bonded over their connections to Samford University.
