Photo Credit: Aditya Sinha

The Class of 2015 at the Welcome Back Dance

This year’s freshmen Welcome Back Dance was on track for success. Leadership put together a great theme of “Endless Summer” and created a sort of “backyard barbeque” setting. However, the dance did not produce the success that Leadership hoped for, due to the freshmen’s lack of dancing and participation in the various activities provided.

This year’s Welcome Back Dance was different than it has been the past four years. Leadership decided to make this year’s dance only include freshmen of the Class of 2015 dance, due to the lack of other grades who attended the dance in previous years. They hoped that more of the freshmen class would turn out because there would be no pressure from higher classes.

Around 220 tickets were sold during the first month of school, which was a promising amount, considering that this year included only the freshmen class, not all grades. Co-organizer of the dance, senior Lauren Dunn, said, “because last year was a combined dance, they probably got about 100 more people than us [this year].”

Co-organizer of the dance, senior Amy Rosenthal, said that, “making the theme, getting all the decorations, advertising to the freshmen, and really playing up the all freshmen dance” was key in spreading the word about the dance around the freshman class.

The dance had a variety of food stations and events that the freshmen could participate in. There was a cotton candy machine, popcorn machine, snow cone machine, and lemonade, keeping the feel of an “Endless Summer.” There were also VIP bags distributed to those specific freshmen who won specific activities in their first Freshmen Transition class period.

Unfortunately, the freshmen class did not seem to want to participate in all these activities offered, diminishing the expected success of the dance. Only about a third of the people in attendance seemed to be dancing and even less purchased the food that was offered.

“I think it was a fun dance, but it would be better with freaking,” said freshman Julie Burke.

The overall freshmen consensus about the dance seemed to match Burke’s opinion. Chaperones of the dance were wearing “no freaking” shirts, which could explain the lack of “freaking” and “grinding” at this dance compared to those of the past.

As for monetary gain, Dunn expects the dance to have made around $2500 or more.

“I was hoping for a few more people, but I think it’s a good turn out and that [the freshmen] [were] happily surprised by the food and their first dance at M-A,” concluded Rosenthal.