The student body was anticipating the winter formal dance that was going to be held on Feb. 27. 

Unfortunately, the decision was made to cancel the dance due to the ongoing pandemic. 

Student Council advisor Liz Huether and President Aly Cromley had the daunting task of coming up with a dance that ensured students could have fun, while also being safe. Huether described this process, “Aly Cromley, myself, Mr. Poldberg, and Mr. Satre had a meeting and discussion over possible ways that we might be able to make the dance happen with x, y, and z protocols.” 

It came down to monitoring Covid-19 protocols and also looking toward other schools to see what they were doing about their events. Putting all of these restrictions together made the task of having a dance quite daunting and potentially disastrous. For those reasons, the answer to this problem became quite clear. The school made the decision to cancel the dance. 

While the odds of having a dance were slim students were still optimistic. Freshman Kole Hartz was looking forward to his first high school dance, without much concern for his health. Hartz just wanted to have fun with his friends. “ I am not concerned about being exposed or the large crowd of people,” stated Hartz. 

Although most students were not concerned with the possibilities of being exposed at the dance, Cromley had the task of attempting to make it safe. 

Her ideas were this, ¨Student Council came up with the idea to have two separate dances; a freshman and sophomore dance from 7:30-8:30, and a junior-senior dance from 9-10 pm, masks required at all times. Our thought process behind two dances was to limit exposure and lessen the amount of people at the dance.¨ 

Even though that would limit exposure to a point, there would still have been up to 250-280 students in the commons at one time. That would still limit the number of people but not enough for the small space that is the commons.

Senior Abi Zimmer is upset about the dance being canceled for many reasons, two of these being that she already bought a dress and this would have been her last winter formal. 

The cancellation is not stopping Zimmer and many others from dressing up with their friends. ¨A couple of my friends and I decided that if the dance were to be canceled, we would still dress up, go out to eat, and then hang out afterward. It looks like we will be following up with that plan,” said Zimmer. 

Ultimately the question is how will the cancellation of winter formal impact the decision of events in the future. Many still seem optimistic about prom and graduation.