Winter Ball and the Farewell dance are on the brink of final elimination.
Due to low attendance, administration discussed the removal of both dances for the 2011-2012 school year. The Farewell dance had a combination of low attendance—less than 300 people attended last year—and it also clashed with other end-of-year activities such as AP testing, Baccalaureate, graduation and finals.
“The placement of the Farewell dance made schedule everything all at once complicated,” said ASB Vice President senior Christina Aguila.
Attendance at Winter Ball has been decreasing every year. Last year, only 257 people attended when the goal was to have at least 400 people, causing the school to lose $9,423. In comparison, the Homecoming dance had a total attendance of 1,200 people.
ASB then began to collectively discuss ways to keep one dance from being eliminated, and created a survey as a way of getting student feedback on the current situation. It has been distributed through Facebook, e-mail, School Loop, school announcements and word of mouth.
The questions asked on the survey include “What type of dance do you prefer to attend?” and “If you had to choose one, which dance are you more concerned about losing?”. This is a way for ASB to see which choices appeal more to the student body.
“People seem to take dances for granted but now that they are being taken away, it will allow students to have more incentive to go,” said class of 2013 Secretary junior Britni Chon.
Dean of students Michael Hicks approved the idea of attempting to get a dance back with administration under the condition that all dances must have at least 600 attendees and cannot be scheduled at the end of the year because of concurrent activities. In order to assure that 600 students will attend, the ASB staff will either have a pre-sale of tickets or a sign-up sheet as a way of getting a rough idea of how many students will attend.
The Blue Pearl dance will stay regardless of other dances that are being removed or put in, because at this dance, students are taught a different kind of dance, swing dancing, in different high school dance atmosphere.
“The typical types of students that attend dances are the ones that like to freak,” Chon said. “But Blue Pearl reaches out to a much broader audience.”
According to Chon, upperclassmen seem to favor more casual dances such as the Farewell Dance, while underclassmen are more partial toward the semi-formal and formal dances.
“We want to create a culture where even if [students] don‘t like dances it can still be a place for [them] to go and socialize.” Aguila said. “At this point we just want to do whatever is needed so that people can feel included.”
Based on the incoming survey results, a possibility of a new alternative to the typical high school dance will be put into consideration with the combined efforts of administration and ASB.
Click for ASB survey here.
