Winter Dance lacks qualities to hype up students

This years Turnabout, with the theme of Casino Royale, will take place Feb. 24th.

This years Turnabout, with the theme of “Casino Royale”, will take place Feb. 24th.

Alexis Naddy, Assistant Features Editor

Even though the Winter Dance is this weekend, surprisingly the conversations aren’t centering on who’s going with whom, where people are taking pictures and where to eat dinner before heading to the school. Instead, many of the conversations are between people who have no interest in attending, which is an impressively large portion of the student body.

According to numbers maintained by the Student Leadership sponsors, approximately 1,000 students buy tickets to attend Homecoming, and only 500 students buy tickets for the Winter Dance, half the amount of Homecoming.

Prom sells about 550 tickets, and although these ticket sales are just slightly more than the Winter Dance, the Winter Dance is open to all MHS students whereas prom is just open to junior and seniors.

The amount of tickets for the Winter Dance, the second dance of the year hosted in February, has remained at 500 for the past few years, and 500 is a small amount for a student body of more than 2,000 students.

The lack of attendance becomes one of the reasons many do not attend.

“I would skip [The Winter Dance] because not as many people go, and I find it boring,” said Brendan Grubb, junior.

Juniors and seniors also argue that the dance is too close to Prom, which is an expensive event for the upperclassmen to attend.

However, although only a portion of the school has these opinions, these negative beliefs are passed around from student to student.

A main reason the dance has been failing to get more students to attend is because people tell their friends they don’t like it or don’t have an interest in going, and who wants to go if their friends aren’t going?

“It really just depends on the person, but some people like to go because you can spend the night dressed up and with your friends… But as for the dance itself, I don’t have any reasons to like it,” said Grubb.

Also, the Winter Dance has always been recognized mainly because it gives girls the opportunity to ask guys, rather than the other way around, which traditionally is how the other school dances have operated. However, many girls don’t use this opportunity to ask someone and end up going alone, which causes even fewer people to attend.

“I feel like a lot of girls don’t like asking guys, and most guys don’t attend unless they’re asked,” said Grubb.

In relation to people not attending with dates as much as they do with Homecoming or Prom, many people don’t attend because they feel it is mainly targeted toward couples. This is mostly because the dance is so close to Valentine’s Day, which falls only a mere 10 days prior to the Winter Dance.

Many older students argue that they would rather attend a school-wide event, similar to the Mustang Olympics or the Girls Senior Night (except all students would be welcomed to participate in the activity).

Flyers for the dance have been posted around the school hallways. It says for the first time there will also be Karaoke and games in the cafeteria. Students appreciate the efforts to make the activity more than just a dance, but if the dance’s organizers wish to get a bigger turnout, they should get rid of the dance all together or just have the dance be a smaller part of the night while other social activities are the main aspect that compel students to attend.

It is not the school’s fault that the dance has an impressively low attendance rate when compared to Homecoming and Prom, as well as other school activities, but there are other underlying factors that just don’t make having a school dance the best option.

Once student opinion is heard, it becomes clear that a majority of the students have valid reasons for not attending and would prefer a different social gathering in February to another dance.