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Hollie Carlson Interview

AS: Alright so this is Anna Swartwout and I’m here withHC: Hollie Carlson
AS: -for the Queens of Slippery Rock Oral History Project. To start off with, can you tell me
where you were from and what your majors and minors were in college?
HC: My hometown is Markleton, PA, that’s in Somerset County, and my major was Health and
Physical Education, minor in Aquatics.
AS: Oh, nice. I didn’t know we had that. So while you were in college, what activities and such
were you involved in?
HC: I worked with the SGA Bookstore and then my main activity was Green and White Society.
It took up most of my time.
AS: Ok, to start, what does being a Homecoming queen mean to you?
HC: Um, it was a little bit unique for me that year because two students had just passed away on
campus that year, one in a car accident and one during basketball practice, so I was actually
involved in the car accident where the one student passed away. So it was a little bit of a
whirlwind. The accident happened in September. Homecoming was in October. So I was
nominated kind of right after the car accident so it was nice to have the support of the university
and my friends and family, the faculty of the university, during the time.
AS: Can you tell me how you viewed Homecoming before you became queen and then after you
became queen?
HC: I really didn’t know that much about it. I had only gone to one Homecoming parade my
freshmen year. I don’t think I did anything with it my sophomore year. I worked a little bit with

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Villagefest because of Green and White Society but I didn’t really have any kind of stigmas or
anything like that towards Homecoming. I just didn’t know anything about the process. It was
kind of like a farfetched thing, like how do you become a university Homecoming queen? It just
seemed like something that didn’t happen to people. So I just didn’t really know how that
worked, so once I got involved with the process and saw kind of how realistic and feasible and
not just like a popularity contest type of thing that it was. It was kind of cool to see the process
happen.
AS: What was the hardest part about running?
HC: My year was very difficult because prior to- so 2011 was kind of a changing year for the
Homecoming process- prior to that you had to be nominated and then meet the Homecoming
requirements, which I believe were you had to have a certain amount of credits and a GPA
requirement, and then you had to be nominated by a club or organization or you could petition
your way into being nominated, and that narrowed it down to twenty or thirty people, I don’t
know how many. Then those people were interviewed by a panel of faculty members and then
they narrowed it down to five individuals, so five girls, five guys. And they were the
Homecoming court. So you got the sash, you were supposed to then campaign for like a week
leading up to Homecoming. So they announced Homecoming court, they announced the five
girls, five guys, and then there was a complaint about the diversity on the Homecoming court. So
they like revoked Homecoming court that year, they like took it back and allowed everybody
who submit an application or petitioned their way in to put themselves on the ballot that year. So
instead of the five people that were nominated by the faculty after the interview process, it was
all the people who were nominated or petitioned were then on the ballot. The university then
voted for all twenty or thirty instead of five of us. And that’s when they started doing it that way

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and announcing court at the pep rally the night before Homecoming and announcing king and
queen actually at the football game.
AS: What was it like to be a part of that?
HC: Ugh, it was bad. So bad. I mean, I was already an emotional train-wreck that year, so I was
just- but watching other people, it worked out for the most part because most of the people who
were originally told they were on Homecoming- because for some people they really wanted to
be on Homecoming court. They really wanted to be a part of it. So some of them were really
stressed out by it. They were given Homecoming court, they were afraid it was gonna be taken
away like stuff like that. So it was really hard to watch because a lot of my friends were on
Homecoming court that year as well and one of them, unfortunately, after they were told they
were on Homecoming court then didn’t make it on to Homecoming court after the campus-wide
vote. So it was a chaotic week because I think they told us on Monday that they were revoking
the court and then the pep rally was Friday. Yeah, it was crazy. There were meetings all week.
People were not happy.
AS: I can tell. What made you decide to run?
HC: I don’t know if it was a decision as much as I got nominated and I thought that it was a nice
gesture from the community for me and I joked actually with the person that I got paired with as
my running partner. We lived together, well not together but on the same floor, my freshmen
year, and we always joked because we were kind of extroverts. And we joked around my
freshmen year about how this was something we were gonna do. We were gonna be
Homecoming king and queen. Never serious. And then we kind of parted ways and ended up
getting paired together after we were nominated. That kind of pushed me to do it after I saw he
was on court, like oh my gosh we’re actually gonna do this. Like it’s gonna happen. So it was

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kind of fun to just be part of the experience. Everybody was so nice. I loved everybody that ran
with me and stuff. I couldn’t have asked for a better Homecoming court. I don’t know much
about the twenty or thirty- the ten of us on court were great. It was a great experience.
AS: Were you involved in any Homecoming queen or anything in high school? Or prom or
anything?
HC: Well we had like basketball court, that type of thing so like basketball. We had a basketball
dance where we all got crowns and stuff, but there wasn’t a Homecoming court in high school. I
had a small high school. Graduated with like seventy kids. But no, I didn’t do Homecoming or
anything like that. I was really involved in high school but yeah.
AS: Was it the Green and White Society that nominated you?
HC: No, it was PEK, the Phys-Ed Honorary.
AS: Oh, ok. That’s awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about your campaign?
HC: Yeah, we, Bryan mostly, my running partner, he kind of took lead on that. Like I said, I
wasn’t really in the best place to really like campaign and go for it. But he was so extroverted
and he was a FYRST Seminar Ambassador so he sent out a bunch of emails and stuff to the
freshmen. Went to all his freshmen friends. He was in the band so he did a lot of campaigning
with the band and a lot of my friends printed flyers. They hung up a lot of flyers around campus.
I remember, I don’t think I helped, because I remember going to the bathroom one day, closing
the bathroom stall and seeing my face on the back of the bathroom door and I didn’t put it there.
I took it down. It was a little weird. Yeah, so my friends were a lot of help. As soon as they
found out I was nominated I had some of my Green and White friends, they kind of split their
time because there were three or four of us on court. They did different things for us, Facebook
groups, everybody had their Facebook page and stuff like that. So that was nice.

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AS: That actually leads me to my next question, about how social media came in to play. Did
you guys jump on that?
HC: Yeah, straight away. My friend Kate actually created a page for Bryan and I, she managed
that, I didn’t. I didn’t do any of that. I’m kind of technologically impaired so thankfully she
helped me. She was a Communications major so she kind of took care of the Public Relations
kind of things. So she created a Facebook page. Instagram wasn’t so big yet whenever I did it, so
it was mostly just Facebook. Twitter a little bit. I think it was Kate, I know somebody put an ad
in “The Rocket”. It wasn’t that long ago but it feels like forever ago.
AS: Before you were obviously elected queen, what did you think your chances were, especially
with everything going on?
HC: Zero. Like I had no- because of everything that happened we had didn’t know if we had to
get a car for the parade because we didn’t know if we’d be on court, we didn’t know what was
happening. I just called my friend who had a Jeep, I think I tried for a convertible, and I just told
her to get the Jeep and take the top off. I don’t even know if I got candy until the morning of
because I like wasn’t even planning on being in the parade after we got court revoked, like oh
they’re voting on thirty people, I’m not even gonna make the court at this point. So no, I didn’t
think it was gonna happen. And then they announced king first and Bryan was definitely well
loved on campus so there was a lot of noise and they announced queen and nobody heard it. So I
just saw Sammy like walking at me and I was like, what are you doing, because I didn’t hear
them say anything and she like started putting the crown on my head. I was like, ok, are you
sure?
AS: Did you encounter any stigma around Homecoming queen or Homecoming in general?

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HC: I didn’t really but I think a lot of that was the people I was surrounded by mostly at that time
because the people that were involved in my situation were also Green and White Society
members so a lot of my friends at that time, the people I was spending the most time with were
all my Green and White friends and I think there were four of us on court. So it was a lot of
Homecoming all the time. So I was just surrounded by people that were all about Homecoming
and my friends were so excited for me and I didn’t really- I wasn’t really exposed to people who
weren’t my people at that time so I think, had it not been that time in my life, I probably would
have, being a Phys-Ed major, I think a lot of my friends probably gave me a little bit of slack for
that, but everybody was really good to my face about it anyway.
AS: After you won, did anything change or was it more support?
HC: It was more support. Everybody was really good about things. We got to do some things on
campus. We had to go to the daycare and read to the kids one day. And I worked at the bookstore
so there was this lady who had a probably eleven-year-old daughter and they had this event on
campus that was like a “Bring your daughter to work day” and she asked me to like surprise her
with the crown and stuff. So I brought it and let her wear it around for the day. Just stuff like
that. So it was fun to get to do that kind of stuff during the year.
AS: Why do you think you won?
HC: I mean, I think a lot of it had to do with how involved I was on campus. I knew a lot of
people, being a Phys-Ed major, that’s one of the bigger majors on campus and Green and White
obviously, I got to know a lot of people on campus, we were involved in a lot of stuff. And
honestly, being running partners with Bryan helped a lot. That kid knew everyone, being in the
band he knew everyone. So with all of his campaigning and go-getting attitude. I don’t think
with him it would’ve gone my way.

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AS: What did your family think of the whole Homecoming and whenever you won?
HC: They were stoked. My whole family- my mom, my sister, and my grandma came for
Homecoming and it was freezing that day. I remember, I didn’t really get to see them much.
They dropped off candy that morning, because like I said I didn’t buy anything, and I remember
looking up in the stadium and seeing my grandma with this scarf like wrapped around her head
and they were like crying they were so happy. So they were really excited about it, especially
because everything had been so difficult in the last month. So they were excited that something
good was happening and they were happy to be there.
AS: Has your life changed at all since becoming Homecoming queen?
HC: I don’t think it changed my life in any way. But I think that I’m somebody that really
connected with Slippery Rock before any of this happened, but I think since it happened I
definitely have even more of a stronger connection to Slippery Rock. Like I love coming back, I
love being here. But I think I would feel that with or without Homecoming. But it’s definitely a
bonding factor to wanting to be here.
AS: Did it positively or negatively affect your college experience?
HC: Oh, definitely positively. It was a bright spot of that year. It helped a lot that year and
brightened my spirit. I don’t think without having done that that semester that I would have made
it through that semester, which is a little dramatic but it was a tough semester and it was
something to look forward to, which was nice.
AS: It was a happy distraction. Have you come back for any Homecomings besides the one for
2012?
HC: Yeah, well I was still here for 2013. Because I was here for five years. So I was here for
junior year, I passed down on my senior year, and then I was still here a fifth year. And then I

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came back the year after that. And then, maybe I came back for two years, but I didn’t come
back this past year because the strike stressed me out so I didn’t wanna be on campus for that.
AS: Did it have any effects on you after college, either personally or…?
HC: I mean I always put it on my resume just because it’s a conversation starter and people love
to talk about it. They’re just fascinated by, kind of what you guys are talking about in this
process, they’re fascinated by how it happens. How do you get to that point? So I just put it on
my resume under activities and stuff like that. And it never fails that when I interview out of my
two-page resume that that’s the one they wanna talk about. So it’s definitely helped me in that
way. People wanna talk about Slippery Rock and Homecoming and my experience here.
AS: It seems like it was something very positive so you wanna talk about it. Well thank you.