Senior class unites students for Cirque du Soleil-inspired prom

On Friday, April 12, Aragon students dressed to the nines and gathered at the San Francisco Design Center for a Cirque du Soleil-themed prom hosted by the Class of 2013. Upon entering, guests were greeted and entertained by circus performers in colorful and elaborate costumes. In between dancing, guests also had the opportunity to consult fortune tellers or be illustrated by caricature artists.

Comments senior Savanna Kiefer, “Prom this year was a lot better than last year. There was just a lot more stuff to do, and last year all there was was a tree, and this year they had acrobatic people and you could go do the caricature and the fortune telling and all that stuff.”

Agrees senior Smita Jain, “I think the acrobats were a nice touch and the little side things were fun for people who weren’t going to dance that much.”

Towards the middle of the night, the student council representing the Class of 2013 announced this year’s Prom Court. Junior Cristina Ashbaugh was crowned Prom Princess, and junior David Leong received the title of Prom Prince. Senior Carly Olson was named Prom Queen, and senior Aldo Severson was crowned Prom King.

For most students, prom involved an elaborate spread of activities and details that required careful planning, such as transportation to and from the Design Center. Students arrived at prom in varied forms of transportation, including party buses, limousines, or carpools. Junior Edgar Tenorio, who arrived in a bus, comments, “We used a bus for transportation and it worked out really well. It got us there early and everything.”

Others, like Junior Connor Kenny, weren’t quite as lucky. “So we had the limo, or so we thought, planned to pick us up at somebody’s house. When 7 o’clock came, the limo wasn’t around, so we checked with the company, and they said that we hadn’t confirmed, so the parents raced us to prom and we barely made it.”

While prom planning can be exciting, it also causes stress for many students. Junior Anya Hsu comments, “[Prom] is ridiculously stressful and blown way out of proportion. People made such a big deal, and it’s [wasn’t] even [our] senior prom.”

For many girls, finding the perfect dress is another detail that requires careful planning. In January, senior Ashley Lu launched a Facebook event page exclusively for girls to post pictures of their prom dresses to avoid duplicates or to share their excitement. Lu comments, “I noticed that other schools had had them in the past, and no one had started one [for Aragon] yet. I thought it would be helpful so that girls didn’t have to worry about someone else having the same dress, because that happened to me last year.”

Junior Kaitlyn Haas agrees that the page was beneficial, “I thought it was super helpful because girls had the chance to get a second opinion on dresses, and there weren’t too many girls with the same dress.”

Students go through plenty of stress with their own planning, but it’s nothing compared to leadership’s undertaking. Senior class president Kevin Dwyer, who headed this year’s prom planning committee, explains, “I think we just knew it [wasn’t] going be like another dance, it [was] going be special. It’s our senior year, and instead of blowing it off and making it a regular dance, we wanted it to be spectacular.”

Luckily, Dwyer and his team, which was comprised mainly of seniors Carly Olson, Dana Pierce, and Brittney Chew, faced very few difficulties during the planning process. Dwyer explained, “Everything that we had planned was executed well. My only complaint would probably be money; we had to pre-pay for everything [personally] and then we had to wait 10-15 days for [Aragon] to give us our money back. Money got to be an issue, but we were able to delegate it and get our money back.”

This year, AP Biology teacher Katherine Ward played a significant role in the planning process. Dwyer comments, “We actually worked a lot with Ms. Ward, who did so much for us. Ms. Ward had helped me with some of the idea concepts for formal, and I just kind of depended on her and put a lot on her and she was very willing to help. I think it was really nice to have someone who wasn’t in leadership helping with prom because with leadership, there’s so much already going on with all the other stuff that to have someone who is just centralizing on prom was really nice.”

Dwyer concludes, “I was very happy with prom in the end. The worst reaction I’ve gotten was, ‘Oh, prom was good.’ It’s never been below that, and everyone I’ve talked to has just been so nice and happy. I was just so happy that we could execute it that way.”