School Dance Article

According to Mr. Wolf, "The purpose is to allow students the opportunities to have social interactions that are not based solely on an educational basis." The school dances are created by the student council and junior class, which currently is the class of 2018. Wolf went on to praise the current efforts made by our student council and junior class, saying "It is an enormous undertaking by the student council and the juniors to host a dance."

Sophomore Meagan Stewart’s opinion of dances is that they are “something to do outside of school or on the weekend, and sometimes it’s nice to dress up." The purpose of school dances is to allow friends get together and have fun in a safe environment without their parents worrying whether or not their kid is getting into trouble.

That is ironic due to the fact some students still get in trouble at dances for inappropriate dancing and dress code, which is the source of many problems with dances. The school wants to set up a safe, comfortable, and fun environment. The kids just want to have fun. Wolf stresses that the fun should be in "good taste," which is subjective. Certain students sometimes test the boundaries and limits created by the administrative authorities.

The conflict between how the students want to act/dance and how the school authorities want them to act/dance sometimes leads to the teachers having to enforce rules. On occasion, like at this year’s homecoming dance, the principle or vice principle has threatened to shut down the whole dance because of student behavior. There was even a drug dog at last week’s Winter Formal.

Even though sometimes the students become rowdy and uncooperative, some teachers found creative ways to deal with them. Former teacher and current library assistant, Ms. Mulford said that when she was still chaperoning school dances, she would go up to the kids in the "grind pit" and ask them if they wanted a cookie.

"Now the girls, and this is what I thought was funny, the girl would say ‘yes, I would love a cookie’ and proceeded to look at the cookies and choose the one they wanted, while the boys would get angry because the girls were no longer dancing with them," Mulford explained. Her approach was a positive way to get students to stop dancing inappropriately and for the teachers to have fun at the same time.

Another issue we have at dances is the way people dress. Not a lot of people get in trouble for how they dress, but there are some circumstances where people push the limits again. The dress code for school dances is the same dress code for the school, but slightly more lenient. Historically, people have dressed fairly casually for most dances, even for the ironically titled “Winter Formal.”

"Most girls would wear cute sweaters and nice dresses, while the boys would dress nicely in khakis and dress shirts. Never jeans." Today most girls wear cute dresses, while the boys wear nice pants and a dress shirt.