With a gigantic replica of the Golden Gate Bridge, a replica of the Ghirardelli Square, and a view over San Mateo, Aragon’s homecoming, “City by the Bay,” took place at the College of San Mateo (CSM) on Nov. 14.
Regarding the change in venue from the Hiller Aviation Museum to CSM, Aragon’s Leadership adviser, Melissa Perino, says, “The student body had said that, although Hiller was a great site, they were tired and wanted a change. We knew CSM has an amazing view of the Bay Area, so last year we made that change.”
This year’s homecoming had the most Aragon student attendees in history. Perino says, “Last year we broke a record with 550 tickets sold and this year we broke that record with 615 [tickets sold].”
The theme was “City by the Bay,” which included San Francisco style decorations and props. The theme was selected by the student body who voted on Voting4Schools.com. Associated Student Body President Anahita Ghajarrahimi says, “When we choose our dance themes, the dance commission of Leadership has a Pinterest board-making week, where they all have Pinterest boards based on themes and the class sees those in a presentation and then the class votes on the theme, so it’s a very democratic process.” Senior Alexandra Magnoli came up with the theme. Perino says, “She wanted a really urban feel and she wanted to honor the view and the location, keeping everything within the same theme.”
However there was some disappointment in the DJ’s connections to the theme as freshman Adam Van Arkel says, “It was ‘City by the Bay’ and they didn’t even play ‘City by the Bay’ [by Journey].”
Along with the change in venue, the dance commission added other new activities for students at homecoming. “We [had] lots of things happening during the dance, so if students aren’t just about dancing we still [wanted] it to be an event that everyone [felt] they could participate in,” Perino says. There was a graffiti wall, murals and a movie for students who wanted to take a break from the dancing. Lauren says, “[The movie was] a good addition, but a little irrelevant to me at least, because I didn’t watch it.”
The nomination process for homecoming royalty was also unique compared to recent years as the homecoming court was selected from all four grades, compared to recent years where it was solely upperclassmen. It started with online voting featuring Voting4Schools.com to determine the nominees and a merit-based panel interview was added to the selection process to prevent the election from being purely influenced by popularity.
Ghajarrahimi says, “We added so all four classes could be nominated because we wanted to make sure that all of the grades had an opportunity to be recognized from the time they start Aragon to the time they finish so they feel more connected with the campus.”
The eight winners (two students from each class) were announced during the middle of the dance. Junior George Marshall says, “I thought it was pretty cool how they announced on stage and how they had a pageant-sash, that was pretty creative.”
Senior Takuya Miwa, who transfered from San Mateo High School, says, “I liked Aragon’s homecoming a lot more than homecomings I’ve been at before because there were a lot of people just having fun.”
