ACU president Dr. Phil Schubert sent the following message on Friday, Aug. 21, regarding fall events:
Dear ACU Community,
Our campus traditionally has several fall activities that bring us together to celebrate what is held dear about our community and demonstrate our Wildcat spirit. As we lean into this unique semester, we have had to make many challenging decisions, one of which is what to do about football, Homecoming and Family Weekend.
Football
As you may know, the Southland Conference recently decided to postpone conference games until next spring. Each university still has the latitude to schedule games this fall with non-conference opponents, so we’re happy to announce the following upcoming games. Kickoff times will be announced later, and we hope to add two other games to the schedule. But we want to make you aware of these right away:
Sept. 19 – at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP)
Oct. 3 – at Army in West Point, New York
Oct. 17 – home against West Texas A&M University
Homecoming and Family Weekend
One of the things we enjoy the most about the fall semester is having parents and alumni return to Abilene. For us to stay in community and maintain our in-person instruction this fall, we have decided not to host major events on campus. This means both Homecoming and Family Weekend will be moved to a virtual environment this year. While we know some of you will be disappointed – and we are as well – we have asked students, faculty and staff to “Do Your Part” to keep our campus safe, and we want to now ask the same of our parents and alumni. For us to finish our semester as scheduled in a residential environment, it is important we manage guest traffic to campus.
We wanted to communicate our decision to you as quickly as possible. As you might imagine, a lot of planning is taking place right now among our events staff, and Alumni and Student Life teams. While we don’t have details for these virtual events finalized yet, you will receive more information in the next few weeks.
Fall is such a special season at ACU, and we eagerly anticipate the time when we can all come back together for these important events and celebrations; however, we believe this is the right decision for our campus. We are thrilled we could schedule a football game on our Homecoming date of Oct. 17. This will give our students, faculty and staff a wonderful opportunity to show their support and cheer on the Wildcats, while still physically distancing and wearing masks. We hope the game will be televised for our alumni, parents and friends to watch.
We are also working on other virtual opportunities for our alumni and parents this fall, and we look forward to connecting with you in new and exciting ways.
I am deeply grateful to all of you for doing your part to keep our community safe this fall. God continues to bless us as we move through this unusual year, and for that, we are immensely thankful!
Go Wildcats!
Phil Schubert, Ed.D.
President