During seventh period on May 17, ASB President and senior Keaton Moe came on the intercom to announce that the end of the year “Hoedown” dance had been canceled. The announcement came hours before the dance was set to be held later that day at 7:00 p.m. in the Aragon gym.
With only around 50 tickets sold, Moe says there was fear that the dance would be a failure.
“There were pros and cons,” says Moe. “Not having the dance, we would avoid the embarrassment of having a horrible dance with 50 or less people there…but we’d have to refund everyone. But by not having it, all the staff wouldn’t have to waste their time.”
While worry over attendance led to the dance’s cancellation, there was no way to truly ascertain how many students planned on attending. As a reward for winning the “Spirit Points” competition Leadership had put into place, seniors were to be allowed free entrance to the dance. While only 50 people bought tickets, it was assumed that attending seniors would add to that number. But on Friday, with no guarantee that more than 50 people would show up, the decision was made to cancel the dance.
“This was 100 percent the Leadership’s decision,” says Aragon Principal Patricia Kurtz, directly following Moe’s announcement. “The administration had nothing to do with it.”
While the final decision was made by the Keaton Moe and his fellow ASB officer, Vice President Parvir Aujla, no other members of the Leadership class appear to have been consulted prior to the decision to cancel the dance.
Senior Sharon Borden, the ASB Treasurer, had no idea the dance was going to be canceled before she heard Moe’s announcement during her seventh period.
“When I found out, I was in Spanish, and me and Jenise [a fellow leadership student] were like, ‘What’s going on?’” says Borden. “There was never any talk about cancelling it, because we thought seniors would go.”
Senior and ASB Secretary Elizabeth McSheery says “If I hadn’t been back at school to turn in my track uniform, I wouldn’t have even heard the announcement,” says McSheery. “People who don’t have a seventh [period] didn’t get the announcement,” she says.
The fact that two members of the ASB Cabinet were not consulted in the decision to cancel the dance raises questions over what qualifies as a “leadership decision.” Before seventh period, it appeared that no one in the Leadership class had any intention of canceling the dance. But during the last period, Moe and Aujla were called out of their classes by Catherine Williamson, the Leadership advisor, and sent to Assistant Principal Joe Mahood, who consulted them about ticket sales.
“I was told that less than 50 tickets had been sold. I asked Parvir [Aujla] what his thoughts were, and then sent him to talk to Ms. Kurtz” says Mahood.
After their meeting with principal Kurtz, Aujla and Moe decided to cancel the dance.
“They were asking us what the reason was to have it,” says Moe, referring to his interaction with the administration regarding the dance. “Basically, they didn’t want to waste staff’s time.”
Both McSheery and Borden were very clear that they had no input in making the final decision to cancel the dance.
“I don’t feel…qualified to talk about the decision because I had no part in it,” says Borden.
They were not alone in their opinions. “If [Leadership] is going to make a decision, we would normally have a class discussion,” says Patrick Lin, a leadership student and president of the junior class. “There would be speakers for and against, and at the end we would have a class vote.”
“This was an executive decision,” Lin says of the dance’s cancellation. “Today in class, most people focused on rally [held during lunch on the same day], not the dance.”
McSheery says that she believes the dance should not have been canceled. “All the staff were already going, [and] you have to pay for the DJ regardless,” says McSheery. “[We] might as well have had it.”
“We had more decorations than any dance, and we won’t get refunded for them,” adds Borden.
“Either way I was fine,” says Aujla, regarding whether or not the dance was going to happen. “[But] it was like the Cuban Missile Crisis…No one wanted to make the decision.”
Poor advertisement was named by multiple Leadership students for the dance’s apparent failure.
“Everything…kind of crept up on us,” says McSheery. “We’ve been…disorganized this semester.”
While the decision to cancel the dance avoided potential embarrassment, the Leadership class lost money refunding ticket-buyers, paying the DJ, and buying decorations.
“I don’t really wanna blame [the decision to cancel the dance] on the admin,” says Moe.“I mean, they said ‘If you shut it down, it’s on Leadership.’ Ms. Kurtz wanted to keep her hands clean.”
