Homecoming is a time honored school tradition. With a football game, pep rallies, and the homecoming dance, school spirit is at its peak. This year, middle schoolers at ERHS cannot attend the dance. It will be a high school only event.
In late August, a google form was sent out via a schoology update asking parents and students for their input on separate homecoming dances. The responses resulted in this year’s homecoming dance being for high school students only.
Suffice to say, there’s been mixed reactions. I went out and talked to both high school and middle school students to ask their opinion.
I was surprised when eighth grader Lilliana Abraham expressed their appreciation for the new rule. “I think it’s great,” they said. They explained that going to Homecoming last year was stressful, and not being able to go this year takes a bit of the pressure off of going. Ninth grader Marilu Pulgarin also likes this new policy. She said that it will make middle schoolers look forward to high school dances more. Starting going to homecoming as a seventh or eighth grader might cause you to feel “burnt out by school dances,” she says, and you may get “introduced to thinking it’s not fun so you don’t want to go.”
In fact most students I spoke to didn't seem to mind ERHS having a high school only homecoming dance. Kent Keohane, a seventh grader, said that since he’s “never been to a homecoming, [he wouldn’t] really know what to expect.” Eighth grader Carmen Dominguez explained that she thinks it “will be fine as long as there is another dance [for middle schoolers only].”
Not everyone likes the new rule. Even high schoolers. Ninth grader Violet Rivers thinks that the lack of middle schoolers will make the dance less fun. “Dances with less turnout aren’t as fun,” she says. Still, some, like Lauren Acevedo, a senior, think that having a smaller dance will be a good thing. She said that it could “start a division between high school dances and middle school dances.”
Of course, middle schoolers enjoyed the homecoming game on September 27th, and will hopefully have their own fall dance in place of homecoming.
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