As tropical flowers decorate the courtyard, and Austin City Limits fills Zilker Park, students are left wondering who thought Homecoming, ACL and the choir auditions all on the same day was a good idea?
Everyone was conflicted with a tough choice this past weekend, as hoco collided with ACL plus the school choir auditions all while trying to make sense of a tropical theme in October. Homecoming missed the mark. It was scheduled at a bad time, the theme was barely known, and the whole thing lacked the excitement it’s supposed to have, what’s usually the most anticipated weeks of the year, ended up feeling rushed and underwhelming, showing that better planning and communication could’ve made all the difference.
Which one to choose: ACL or Hoco? Is what many students must’ve thought. It sucks that we had to choose to go to one or the either, last year the Homecoming dance was two weeks later which did not affect any major scheduling conflicts, so why it’s so much earlier this year, makes no since especially because we live in Austin students are going to want to go to ACL and have been looking forward to this for a very long time, for freshmen they are the most excited for the dance, since it’s their first high school dance it’s a major deal, to find out hoco is on the same weekend as ACL can be a major let down, we should be able to attend both events, making students go to one or the other makes people feel like they missed out on the excitement their friends are having, especially seeing everyone’s Instagram posts on how much fun they had at homecoming with all their friends, all dressed up, or how exciting it was seeing their favorite artist at ACL.
On top of the already big schedule conflict, it’s on the same day as choir auditions for regions which is a huge deal for the singers. This must put major stress on the students in choir as they have to sing their best then get ready for the dance. During auditions, they started to set up for the dance which made everything so chaotic plus planning for hoco, made the day hectic for the choir.
The homecoming dance is already so anticlimactic. Everyone is hype going to the football game, dressing up for theme days then they go to the dance to find it outside in the courtyard with little to no activities, in addition to this hoco has a tropical theme in fall. The student council dance committee made the theme and have been working hard on it for a long time, although no one actually knew about the theme. They didn’t do a great job of announcing it to the school, they put around a few posters and signs, nothing for all students to know about it except for an instagram post.
The theme was picked because it was colorful, bright and fun which is the vision they wanted for the dance. Their inspiration was the movie Rio. There weren’t many tropical decorations at the dance, it was colorful, bright along with streamers, lanterns, and multi-colored lights saturated the cafeteria, which is pretty except it gave people headaches, if you didn’t know there was a tropical theme you wouldn’t have known that that’s what they were going for.
In the future, they should see which weekend most students have off, we already have days off for ACL so it would have been smart to also schedule the dance on a different day too they should have especially changed the date because of the choir auditions the school knew what day this was going to be on in advance yet still held it on the same day to add on to this the money goes back to the school when people buy tickets so the school would profit more if more students went, which also means they should make the dance more enjoyable.
Mostly only freshmen go to the dance, sophomores, juniors, and seniors hardly ever go, which should be a sign for the school to ramp up the dance. This is the first time in over ten years that the school has had a theme for homecoming the idea of having a theme is good, letting students vote for their own theme could be a great idea, also letting students vote to see what activities they would like they can see if those are things we can do in years to come would make the dance more entertaining and up the attendance.
