This year’s homecoming dance, held in the gym, was decorated with a large jellyfish and other sea creatures to portray the theme of “Under the Sea.” Macy Gearheart led the creation of many of these decorations, working hard with Student Council to create a good environment for the dance. Photo courtesy of: Frances Pickar

On the evening of September 21st, South held the annual homecoming dance in the gym. Every year, homecoming is a highly anticipated event, bringing tiger spirit into the new school year. This year was no different, with festivities of spirit week, the pep fest, the homecoming football game and the homecoming dance. As always, student council worked very hard to bring these events to life. The theme for this year’s dance was “Under the Sea,” and the decorations portrayed this theme well; with a large jellyfish, clam, and other fish hanging around the gym made by student council members. Students Macy Gearhart and Frances Pickar led the creation of the decorations.

Many enjoyed the dance, such as freshman Danny Vanpelt who stated, “It was fun to dance and hang out with my friends.” However, there were some moments of confusion that made an impression on the dance’s general atmosphere. Some of this stems from miscommunication between admin and student council. Immediately coming to the dance, students saw a line outside of the school of people waiting to get in. This raised questions among students regarding if the multi-step process of checking in to the dance was even necessary. In order to enter the dance, you needed a permission slip and your student ID. Once you got to the front of the line, you were asked for these two items, and once looked over, you were guided into the school entrance where another set of admin looked through these same items. This process went fairly quickly if you were turning your permission slip in at the dance. However, for the people who had turned in their permission slips in advance, they had to wait as admin searched for their names on a long list of students and in some cases, their names were not found. There seemed to be a disconnect between students turning in their permission slips and then being added to the list because this was not an uncommon story. And while those people were all eventually let into the dance, it held up the line for others and also let down some excitement for the dance, as they had to wait to find out if they were allowed in.

Another miscommunication also involved permission slips. Student council vice president Vivan Jones remarked that admin gave student council the permission slips to hand out and said they could be turned in at the dance and gave no further instruction. However, when students signed permission slips to bring guests into the dance, they were denied at the door, with admin claiming permission slips for guests had to be turned in beforehand. This caused uncertainty throughout the students and guests as they were told to wait to the side for someone to talk to them, but it seemed no one was coming. Jones commented, “It ended up being that Shondrelle Burkhalter had to personally approve people to come in, which was just time consuming because there’s only one of her and there’s a lot of people that need to get in.” Jones notes that for the future, she hopes that communication between admin and student council can improve to minimize bumps in planning events like this. These factors led to some negative feelings about the dance, but in all was not the deciding factor on the dance’s success.

One positive about the dance this year was the cost: completely free! This created an incentive to come to the dance, as there was no big commitment to make by coming. Student council events chair Frances Pickar noted the reason behind the decision to make the dance free. “We wanted as many people to be able to come as possible.” Adding on to Pickar’s comment, Jones stated, “There’s not really a point [in the dance costing money], we didn’t put a crazy amount of money into it, so we don’t have all that much to make back from it.”

As well as the cost, there was high praise for the decorations at the dance with junior Eleri Peterson highlighting it as one of her favorite things about the dance. Pickar also mentioned it being a part of the dance she was proud of. “We put a lot of effort into those decorations and we genuinely had the best intentions in mind and tried our hardest.”