New 10:00 rule keeps Tower Hill students at Homecoming Dance - fun ensues!
by: Molly Hurst
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For homecoming this year, Tower Hill instituted a new rule: if you wanted to attend, you had to arrive at the dance by 8:30 (the dance itself would begin at 8:00), and you had to stay until it ended at 10:00—a deviation from the previous rules of you had to be in by a certain time, but you could leave whenever you wanted to.
I was originally unsure about this new rule, considering it felt a little weird to be ‘forced’ to stay at the dance. As a Junior, I’ve attended the dance in the past during my Freshman and Sophomore years, and I feel like I have a generally neutral opinion about its rules, so since this was a change from the past, I didn’t really know what to think about it! My friends felt similarly, and I feel like most of the Upper School did, too.
Coming off of 2023 Homecoming, we were all a little concerned as that dance had not been very highly attended: Anna Schiltz, a graduate last year, collected data on the 2023 Homecoming turnout, which showed that 52.2% of attendees (who answered the survey, which, according to her, was mostly juniors and seniors) left after an hour and a half at most. This year, if you showed up at 8:30 and stayed the whole time, that was the entirety of the event; in contrast, 2023’s was much longer given that the data goes up to attending for two and a half (or more) hours. So, going into this year’s dance, I didn’t know what to expect.Would this new rule turn out to be great, or, instead, awful given the great percentage of people who did not stay for long last time?
On the Tuesday before Homecoming, I spoke with Sarah McCuskey about her thoughts on staying until 10:00. Sarah is a Junior representative on the Student Life Board, so she had greater insight into the circumstances surrounding the rule than I did. “They’ll [THS students] realize when everyone stays there, it’s gonna be fun,” Sarah said. “The reason that we made the rule was because we want Homecoming to be fun…and who knows, maybe next year, they’ll want to stay longer.” After a few days of being apprehensive, I began to think that, if everyone had to stay, the dance would be much more enjoyable, a kind of the more, the merrier type of situation. Instead of fearing the rule, I began to think it might not be so bad, after all.
Now, as for the dance itself: I felt that it was much more highly attended, and I found it more enjoyable. While no dance is perfect, I was not unhappy with it at all; sure, maybe a few things could have gone a little better (and maybe the music would not have cut out so many times, ideally), but I found the event to be something very fun. Scarlett Quinn-Plemmons, who I talked to after the dance, told me that she feels like the event was a lot more fun if you actually participated in it and tried to have fun—if you just stood around, you missed out a little bit. While this may not hold true for everyone, I feel like I had a lot more fun once I just tried to enjoy what was going on.
Overall, I was very happy with this new rule. While I’m sure there are still some people who are not fans of the requirement to stay, I think that the Homecoming Dance was a lot more enjoyable this year because there were more people, a direct cause of the new rule. Now, we just have to see what happens next year!
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