FARGO (KFGO/KVRR) — A mechanical engineering student at NDSU has started an online petition to reinstate homecoming king and queen at the university.
Landon Allex started the petition on Change.org. Allex said he is not trying to invalidate this year’s winners, but wants to make a policy change for future elections.
NDSU changed the voting for the positions in 2021, allowing students to simply vote for two people to be the homecoming royalty. The winners this year were both men – Zachary Quirk and Connor Dilse.
Allex said there should still be two separate titles to recognize a man and a woman.
“We need to hold our public institutions accountable to recognizing this basic truth,” Allex said. “NDSU has avoided the gender issue on this topic by choosing to remove gender from the tradition. Although this change was voted on by the student body four years ago, this vote was held in the aftermath of Covid and does not likely represent the ideals of the students today.”
