The week before prom, I realized something disturbing to me.
As a freshman, there are no more dances for me to attend this year.
Currently, underclassmen only have 2 dances: the Welcome Back Dance and the Homecoming Dance. Juniors and seniors have an additional dance each (prom and ball, respectively). While freshmen and sophomores can go to prom or ball if they are asked by an upperclassman, it is uncommon. In addition, both the Welcome Back Dance and the Homecoming Dance are during 1st quarter, leaving freshmen and sophomores without any dances to anticipate for the majority of the school year.
Campo once had 2 dances on top of the 4 current ones. In December, there was a dance called “Morp” (prom spelled backwards). According to leadership teacher Dino Petrocco, the last Morp was in 2000. In 2001, the Morp was changed to a formal winter dance due to the tendency for students to dress inappropriately at the Morp. But then, “kids weren’t as interested in it,” so the winter dance was cancelled.
A Sadie Hawkins dance was held in the past, around Valentine’s Day.
Sadie Hawkins is a dance for which girls ask boys, a clash with tradition. But this dance has also been discarded due to poor attendance.
“Sadie Hawkins was one of the most poorly attended dances,” said Petrocco. According to Petrocco, about 400 people on average attended each Sadie Hawkins dance. The Sadie Hawkins dance was used as the trial run for instituting breathalyzer tests to students before admitting them, which caused attendance to drop even further.
2010 was the last year a Sadie Hawkins dance took place, with only 200 people attending. “We decided it wasn’t worth our time,” Petrocco said.
Thus, the calendar for school sponsored social gatherings like dances is rather sparse.
It’s time we offered a straight forward, casual dance in the spring that is open to all students for 3 reasons:
Students are ready to embrace the school dance format again. Just avoid the gimmicks. Attendance at the Welcome Back Dances remains healthy. The poor attendance of the Sadie Hawkins dance was probably due to its theme. While some girls do ask boys to dances now, it still seems to be more common for boys to ask girls at Campo.
“I don’t really care what kind of dance it is. I just think that we should have another school dance because we didn’t have one at all last quarter,” said freshman Michelle Kwak.
Secondly, it is something for students to anticipate in the 3rd quarter of the school year. There are only 2 long weekends in the 3rd quarter: the weekend after finals and Presidents’ Day weekend. As a result, the 3rd quarter seems agonizingly infinite. In addition, the musical and SATs in March contribute to increased student stress. A casual dance would lessen some of that tension.
Finally, an extra dance would be a good way to raise money. With tickets priced at the usual $20 each, that could add up to a significant amount of money for the school, or the class or group that might sponsor it.
Adding an additional dance in the spring would be good for everyone.
