Seniors move on from alternative prom

Spring has arrived with its usual warmer weather, blooming flowers, and buzzing bees. However, the buzz this spring hasn’t been about the bees, but instead about prom, or more appropriately stated, proms.

Towards the end of February, a group of seniors took the initiative of planning an alternative prom that came to be known as “Grad Bash.” The idea was to provide a less-restrictive environment for students to have fun and enjoy their night without administrative involvement.

“For every year that I’ve been alive it seems like everyone has a pretty average prom experience,” senior Grad Bash organizer Grayson Williams said. “We wanted to try and do something new and make it a really awesome experience that you remember for the rest of your life.”

News of the proposed alternative prom quickly spread with the help of Twitter and Instagram, and mainly by word-of-mouth. Initially, little information was provided in terms of legitimacy, location, pricing, and motives. Back in late February, the only guarantee was that the idea of an alternative prom was gaining heavy ground.

“I heard about it pretty quickly after it started to become an idea,” Principal Gavan Goodrich said. “I didn’t know much about it or why people were wanting to have an alternative dance. The biggest reason I thought people wanted to do it was because they weren’t happy with how the administrators managed the dancing.”

As weeks went on and both speculation and support for the Grad Bash rose, the administrators had a meeting with one of the organizers of Grad Bash to figure out what exactly the plan was, and why.

“We really wanted to listen and find out why, and what was their thinking, and was there anything we could do to get them to consider not doing it,” Goodrich said. “It was a really good meeting. We mainly listened, and what I heard was somebody who had a lot of energy who was very excited and wanted to do something very different.”

Despite one common perception, especially among parents, the organizers of Grad Bash did not intend any disrespect in their planning of an alternative prom. After several meetings between these students and the administrators, this was understood on both sides.

“[Some parents] considered what we were doing to be disrespectful to the school by I guess stealing away patrons, as they said, which is fair, but what it was was an alternative,” Williams said. “Our intentions absolutely were not [to be disrespectful], and the administration knows that, I’ve talked to them a lot about it.”

As time went on, Grad Bash began to run into unforeseen problems. A divide began to form among the student body, even among groups of friends, over which of the two proms people would be attending.

“We had enough money raised,” Williams said. “We could have bought the venue, but some of my best friends and some people I really care about in the school wouldn’t be allowed to go, and they’d have to go to the school prom, and that would split up a lot of people.”

The administration also had the same concerns. At the end of a senior presentation on the school’s programming day on March 8, Superintendent Ted Moore advised the students that whatever prom they went to, it was important that they all went to it together, as a class. Students, parents, teachers, and administrators alike believed having the option between two proms was causing stress between friends and classmates. Prom is an end of the year event typically designed to commemorate the senior, or in this case junior and senior, class as a whole. The celebration and experience wouldn’t be the same if students were split between two proms.

“I was worried about what the picture-taking experience would be like, if you’re at somebody’s house and some people are going one way and some are going the other way,” Goodrich said. “It would just cause a lot of discomfort. Even the kids were kind of sitting on the fence not doing anything because they were kind of waiting to see what to do before they invested their money in a ticket for a dance, for prom.”

As the feedback for the alternative prom became increasingly negative, the organizers decided it would be best to cancel the event.

“It’s not really worth it to ruin some people’s entire prom experience,” Williams said. “I just decided it was in the best interest of pretty much everybody if I went ahead and just merged the proms.”

With the controversy over two proms having disappeared, the organizers of both events now faced yet another challenge: compromise.

“We all sat down together, the juniors and one of the Grad Bash organizers, and talked about what we could do in terms of trying to have their DJ, or a DJ they thought would be the best, and how we could maybe try to do the best we could with the lighting to make the experience try to be the best it could possibly be,” Goodrich said.

The administration is more willing than ever to make all aspects of the prom-planning more collaborative. While dances in the past have had what students believe to be unnecessarily strict dancing restrictions, the administrators and students are actively working towards a compromise.

“In the end, I did say that, as administrators we’re going to listen to students in terms of trying to be fair and respectful to their space on the dance floor and all that, but at some point we have to intervene when it gets over the edge of what’s acceptable,” Goodrich said. “I think we’re going to try to listen and come up with some strategies where we stay as far away as possible, but maybe, at times, show our involvement. The furthest thing we would want to do is try to intervene with somebody’s dancing. We don’t enjoy that, it’s very awkward, but we have to do what we have to do because that’s our job, that’s what we’ve been asked to do so we have to do it whether we like it or not.”

Overall, most people say the merging of the two events has gone well and with great success. Arrangements for school-sponsored prom tickets are even being made for students who already bought tickets for Grad Bash.

“We heard the price of the other dance so we lowered the initial price for the school prom down to that level to try to listen to people’s concerns about the price,” Goodrich said. “I even told one of the [alternative prom’s] organizers that we’d work with him to take his names and just turn that money over to get the school’s prom tickets and just do it that way. We’re more than willing to work and make it as easy as possible for everybody in that situation.”

The general reaction to the merging of the proms seems to be relief, especially from junior class president and head of the school prom committee, Alex Hopkinson.

“It was kind of stressful because I knew there was a possibility that there would be less people going to my prom, but I knew the whole time that prom was going to happen no matter what, so in that effect it didn’t worry me,” Hopkinson said. “The only thing I was worried about was the numbers and how it was going to work out financially and in terms of who was actually going.”

Goodrich believes this dual-prom scare positively impacted the way similar events will be planned in the future.

“I think we really learned [from this],” he said. “We’re a young school, and we’re still learning about how to do things the best way, and I do think that we missed an opportunity this year, but I think this has certainly helped us to really think about how we want to plan proms for the future.”

One option being considered is to involve seniors during the early-planning stages, such as in the spring the year before when the venue is typically picked out. In the past, prom has been planned by a committee of juniors to alleviate the seniors of the responsibility of planning such a huge event. However, allowing the seniors a chance to give some input on their preferences could help avoid any disagreements in the future.

“If you get kids interactive with stuff like that, you know making a prom experience better, back in August, versus a month or two before, then you won’t have a big uproar about it,” Williams said. “If you get kids on board earlier, you’re going to make a better experience, and I feel like [the administration] knows that now, and I’m glad they realize that.”

In light of all the controversy, there seems to be many positive changes in not just prom itself, but the overall student and administrative attitude.

“I think that as the administrators of the school and the teachers of the school, we need to do even more to listen to what the students want and what concerns they have, and try to find some solutions,” Goodrich said. “I definitely think that’s a shortcoming of either me or my approach, but also just a lack of not having [that kind of collaborative effort] in place before we got here. This is [Lovejoy’s] seventh year and when you think of it a lot of schools have been around for 50 or 60 years, so I think we need to be smart about what we do in terms of working with students. In this school the kids are terrific, they’re very easy to work with, they’re very positive by and large, and I think we just need to engage them more so that we can make the school the best it can be for them.”

Seeing as there is no animosity between the planners of Grad Bash and the administration, Goodrich doesn’t believe there should be any between the planners and anybody else, either.

“The guys who were out there trying to create this really cool concert-like party should not be criticized. I think they were doing what they thought was right and they tried to rally a group to do something that was different, and you should never criticize people for doing that,” Goodrich said. “It’s only made us look internally at ourselves and make us better. Some people and parents might say well how dare those guys go out and do that, but I think they took a risk and, at some point along the way they realized they might not be able to pull it off, but I don’t think they should be criticized. I think they should just be listened to.”

The school’s only and official school-sponsored prom will be held at Southfork Ranch on May 18 from 8-11 p.m. Tickets can be bought for $40 in the school store, with prices rising to $50 on April 1, $60 on May 1, and $80 at the door.

“The theme is called ‘La Boum’ which means ‘The Party’ in French,” Hopkinson said. “It’s going to be awesome.”