Sophomore Mackenzie Farrel pomps the Kappa Kappa Gamma — Sigma Alpha Epsilon float Thursday. (Sidney Hollingsworth/ The Daily Campus)

Blaring music can be heard around the corner of North Central Expressway and SMU Boulevard as students work together to build floats for the Student Foundation’s 2011 theme of “Bright Lights, Big City.”

Students from an array of organizations entered into a week of chaos as they have been building and decorating their floats for Saturday’s Homecoming parade.

The 12 floats represent different cities from around the world, such as New Orleans, London and Sydney, and were chosen by each organization to go with the Homecoming theme.

“We chose New York because it’s the 10th year anniversary of 9/11 and we really wanted to commemorate that and commemorate the city,” senior Kappa Kappa Gamma President Kelly Anthony said.

Float building began Sunday and goes until 8 p.m. Friday. All of the organizations become very competitive with their float decorating. Once the floats are finished, it is hard to tell the floats are just made of wood, chicken wire and tissue paper.

Pomping, which consists of poking tissue paper through chicken wire, is how all of the floats are decorated for Homecoming.

Chi Omega and Sigma Phi Epsilon are working together on their Venice float and hope to defend last year’s title by winning first place again.

“We incorporated movement in our float last year with a spinning piano and we are hopeful we’ll be number one again,” Tyler Armstrong, a senior member of Sig Ep, said.

Float building is a great opportunity for members of each organization to bond with one another as well as with other organizations while being creative.

“It has been great spending time making memories,” Chi Omega member Jennie Pearson said.

The floats will be judged from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. before the parade.

Video shot and edited by Sidney Giesey, [email protected]