By Grace Lynn Keller
As the harvest gets underway, the UI recognized a signature Iowa crop on Sept. 29 in Hubbard Park with Cornpalooza, a one-day festival celebrating everything about Iowa’s corn.
“It’s a celebration of corn, and the University of Iowa, and just Iowa in general,” said Clare Keating, the event director.
Students who participated in the festivities enjoyed cornhole, corn-theme crafts, a corn photo backdrop, and corn-theme food.
UI students Dana Lumetta, Emily Kwak, Heidi Hennenberg [can’t find], and Julia Garry, who attended Cornpalooza, agreed that the free food was the best part.
“My favorite is the corn chowder,” Lumetta said.
According to the Iowa Agriculture Crop report, as of last week 52 percent of the corn crop had reached maturity, and 94 percent had reached dent stage or beyond.
Keating said she hopes the corn tradition keeps going for a long time to come.
Sept. 29 was only the beginning of the celebration, kicking off a weekend and week filled with corn tradition for the UI campus.
Cornpalooza prefaced the assembly of the UI’s iconic Homecoming Corn Monument on the Pentacrest over the weekend by volunteers from the College of Engineering.
The Corn Monument, a UI Homecoming tradition, started in 1914. The tradition was discontinued and reinstated numerous times throughout the years for various reasons, and it was officially brought back in 2014 by the American Society of Civil Engineers, a student organization in the engineering school.
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The Corn Monument is a large structure framed in wood and covered with corn. It’s a way to celebrate Homecoming and the Hawkeye tradition, and the design reflects the spirit of the school.
“It’s a staple of Iowa,” said Keegan Parizek, the Corn Monument director. “All the students love walking past the Corm Monument on campus during the week. It’s a good way to bring everyone together.”
This year’s design will feature the letters spelling I-O-W-A stacked on top of a platform decorated to look like a football field. Parizek said organizers hope to cover the letters in corn.
“We used 450 pounds, so approximately 800 ears of corn,” Parizek said.
Construction on the monument finished Sunday, and the piece will be up for the duration of Homecoming Week for people to enjoy.
The weekend’s celebration of Iowa’s iconic crop was a success, despite a bit of corn controversy earlier in the week.
Facebook events battled back and forth after the event “Sneak into Iowa at midnight and steal all their corn” was posted. Events were then created in response, such as “Defend Iowa From People Stealing Our Corn So Country Girls Can Make Do” and “Distract the people of Iowa trying to keep us from stealing our corn.”