There’s a spirit among the students of IHS, or rather a lack thereof, when it comes to school events. The administration always sets up many rules and regulations, and as a result both those hosting and those attending must meet far too many guidelines.
Considering the usual ambivalence towards many new events, the turnout for the Sadie Hawkins Homecoming Dance was admirable. The dance created buzz, stirred interest, and attracted a commendable amount of people. There was, however, room for improvement both for the dance itself and the policies surrounding it.
IHS’s past in relation to dances is stormy, with the homecoming dance being “outlawed” for several years for rather mysterious reasons. Last year, the senior class organized a fall dance—a nice attempt, but one that fell short of being necessarily successful. Word on the street is that the cancellation of the homecoming dance almost half a decade ago was due to misconduct. To that end, the stringent regulations on this year’s homecoming dance may have been enforced to prevent said misconduct.
To the dismay of many, tickets were only on sale until the Thursday before the dance, which prevented many who were unaware of this deadline from getting a contract signed and attending the dance. Therefore, many students failed to take the contract seriously, forging signatures and providing inaccurate parental phone numbers for convenience. The Thursday deadline seems to have been created to allow the associate principals time to sign off the names of students who bought tickets. Is this a precaution to avoid the chance of misconduct at the dance? Do the APs really have a chance to check the legitimacy of every single phone number? For something that should be easy and fun, the APs seem to be exerting a lot of effort. Students must also jump through hoops and be conscious of a deadline in order to purchase a ticket. It seems as if there is much more room for things to go awry at a sporting event such as a football game than the homecoming dance. Why are tickets available at the door at a game, but not at the dance? The rulings for these events seem arbitrary, as if one bad thing is reason enough to ruin the ideal ease of a harmless dance.
As for the actual dance, it was anticlimactic and relatively ordinary considering the amount of hype it received and its stately formalities one would expect at a classy gathering. All the streamers, balloons, and lights in the world would have a hard time concealing the mundane nature of the cafeteria, so there was expectedly little that could be done in that regard.
Upon entrance, the chaperones happily accepted your $12 ticket and directed you towards the dance. However, before entering the dance, you were required to visit a coat check. A $12 ticket was pricey to begin with, but a mandatory coat check seemed a little much. With the $12 ticket, you may have expected free refreshments; however, a bite-sized cupcake, a dixie shot of soda, and a cookie came out to a grand total of almost seven dollars. For these prices, airplane food seems reasonable by comparison. It also seemed as if more could have been done with the proceeds, considering the hefty prices. In the future, the earnings of the dance could be invested in decorations, and more importantly, food. A coat check does often come in handy, but charging for it defeats its purpose. Perhaps in future years the ticket could just be bumped up to $13 and the coat check could be deemed “complimentary”.
A good effort was put forth in organizing the Sadie Hawkins dance, and with the aforementioned improvements in mind, it is a hopeful start to a legacy of future IHS homecomings.