On Friday, Oct. 15 from 8:00-10:00 p.m., the Kingswood Oxford Student Government Association (SGA) hosted the first homecoming dance in over two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Traditionally, the dance takes place in the dining hall, but since the SGA wanted to have homecoming without masks or additional restrictions, they instead decided to hold the dance outside in front of Alumni Hall.
Originally, the dance was supposed to be held from 7:00-10:00 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 16, but due to the weather forecast predicting rain on Saturday evening, the SGA decided to move the dance a day earlier. Moving the dance to Friday night also allowed for the members of the varsity football team to attend, as they had a game scheduled in New Hampshire on Saturday afternoon.
As in years past, the SGA selected a theme for the dance that included a KO-related pun. This year’s theme was “KOnstellation.” Since there are not many places to hang decorations outside, the SGA instead decided to hang up lights above where the dance would be held. “We had planned on buying little lights, but when we asked the Parent Association about how they might be able to help out, someone gave us these nice string lights,” senior class president Sam Krugman said.
When students began arriving on campus at 8:00 p.m., they immediately saw the glow of the lights in front of the steps of Alumni Hall, and they could hear the music blasting from the DJ’s booth. Throughout the course of the dance, students were seen dancing and singing with friends.
“I think the dance was really fun, especially since there hasn’t been many school events in so long so having one was refreshing,” junior Charlotte Eberle said. “I think some people were apprehensive about how it would play out, but it exceeded expectations and was a really fun night.”
Not only was the homecoming dance a great way for students to socialize after school hours, but it also was a significant event in terms of boosting the school’s community life, especially given the fact that the vast majority of events have been cancelled due to COVID-19 health and safety restrictions.
“I think it was really important that we had a dance where people were dancing with a DJ, just to show the school once again that this is what we do and that dances aren’t going anywhere,” Sam said.
While the homecoming dance was certainly a success, there were still areas for improvement. For starters, the date change was not announced until Thursday afternoon, giving students only a little over 24 hours to adjust their plans. This was largely due to a lack of foresight, as there was no rain date for the dance scheduled in advance. Additionally, even though faculty planned to breathalyze all the students before being granted access to the dance, the breathalyzers were not working properly, resulting in a large number of students being admitted into the dance without being breathalyzed.
Despite these minor hiccups, the SGA did an excellent job planning the homecoming dance and overcoming all the obstacles they faced due to COVID-19, the weather, and scheduling conflicts to provide a fun and exciting experience for the KO student body.
