By Alejandro Barlow, Oct. 24, 2023
Saturdays for students at Cal Poly Pomona are typically days to relax from classwork or to clock into weekend jobs. Rose Float members wait for every Saturday with anticipation because it is the club’s lab day where they work on the float before the day it goes down the Rose Parade route.
The Cal Poly San Luis Obispo team brought its half of the float down to unite it with Cal Poly Pomona’s half Friday Oct. 13 inside the Rose Float Lab.
“The joining of the two halves really signifies, at least to me, is that from here on out, we’re in this together, and we always were, but this is a much more tangible and a physical representation of that rose float spirit of one team two campuses,” CPP’s Rose Float President Matthew Rodarte said.
The Rose Float Club joins together every Saturday up until what they call “dead week,” which is the week right before finals week to allow focus on their studies. Cal Poly SLO stays in Kellogg West for one week after their finals are over to work on the float as one team.
Collin Marfia is the vice president at Cal Poly SLO and a double major in history and anthropology and geography with minors in environmental studies, sustainable environments and indigenous studies. Marfia was the hydraulics lead last year and had to troubleshoot restarting the engine that runs the entire float minutes before the parade.
“A saying semi unofficial but recognized by the inspectors in the Tournament of Roses that, ‘Float engines don’t turn off, they break down,’” Marfia said. “If you break your engine doing it, congrats you made it through.”
The parade officials give each float a 30-second window to start up their float, and if they cannot get it to start, there is a tow truck in front that will hook up to the float in the next 30 seconds. Marfia now runs around making sure each department runs smoothly so this does not happen.
Cal Poly SLO Rose Float President Quinn Akemon, a plant science student with a focus in horticulture, tries to be there the best she can for every member of the rose float team, to look out at the team and know what each of them needs at any moment.
Akemon and Marfia facilitate, plan and execute moving SLO and all the equipment for the club’s long drive. The planning happens through the week and have days with two to four hours of meetings. The time spent in meetings planning is worth the wait for the club members involved.
“Something that I keep saying about this float for 75 (year anniversary)is that it is larger than life,” Akemon said. “We generally make floats that are physically massive, but every time I look at this float I go, ‘That’s huge.’”
Keeping everyone focused on the goal and on the same page in the project is difficult to do when the campuses are separated by more than 100 miles and cannot join the same meetings. One way the club counteracts this is with their mission statement or guiding light, which are hree words that keep the team focused on the goal.
“The three main words we came up with for this year’s parade were funky, energizing and striking,” Akemon said.
Akemon explained if everyone on the team relays back to these three words at any time working on the float, then the team is going in the right direction. The club also embodies the Cal Poly learn by doing motto and teaching all who are interested.
“The joining of the two halves is like basically the base on which our entire program is built,” Rodarte said. “We could not do this without our partners to the north. We are all one team just divided by campus.”
Feature Image Courtesy of Alejandro Barlow