Home”coming” will be going next year, as leadership members drop the dance due to a lack of appreciation and respect for their work.
Photo By: Isabella Rivera, Photographer
Disclaimer: the following article was written as a part of The Seminole’s 2015 April Fool’s issue. The content included is false, including interviews. Blonsick’s announcement on NDN was also a part of our script. The Leadership group, including Ms. Johnsen (Jesni), were in on the joke and we appreciate their cooperation. Happy April Fool’s Day!
By: Paige Fry, Editor-in-Chief
After much thought and consideration, Leadership Advisor, Mrs. Janill Johnsen, (formerly known as Ms. Jesni) and the 2014-2015 Leadership Class has officially announced that the 2015 Homecoming Dance and Week will no longer take place.
This has been decided due to a lack of appreciation and hateful comments on social media. Leadership has concluded that their efforts into putting on an unappreciated dance is a wasteful amount of time and energy.
Johnsen says, “We enjoy making the student body happy, but we have to dedicate our time into services that are more respected. All of Leadership is personally offended by people overlooking our hard work and harshly criticizing us, when all we do is strive to make the Seminole experience more enjoyable and memorable for students.”
Some of the distasteful comments included things such as, “Lettuce Dressup is stupid and makes no sense”, “90’s Day is irrelevant and such a dumb theme for a dance”, “The DJ sucked, the music was awful”, “The people in Leadership have no creativity and should not be in charge of Homecoming”, and “All Leadership does is make banners”.
Even though these opinions are expansively shared they are undoubtedly false.
Junior Leadership student Luke Ellis says, “I’m a strong supporter in cancelling Homecoming. I’ve had multiple comments directed towards me on how I’m just taking Leadership as an easy A, but that is not true. Leadership is probably my hardest class, mentally and physically, and I believe that we all deserve recognition, which we have not been receiving.”
SHS students are unaware of all the hours Leadership puts in behind the scenes of almost every single school spirit-type event on campus. Just last year, Leadership collectively put in over 2 months worth into preparation and spent around $14,215 for the dance alone. This money comes from the amount left over from the ticket sales of the last Homecoming and donations made to Leadership.
2014-2015 Student Body President Nicole Blonsick says, “We do much more than just Homecoming, so now we’re not going to do it. Then, maybe people will notice all of the other things that we do. Instead of using the money that would have been previously used for Homecoming we are going to use that money to take the 2015-2016 Leadership Class to the National Student Leadership Conference, [NSLC] which is held in Chicago.”
Previously, Leadership was unable to attend NSLC summer program because of the expensive cost to take part in the conference as well as cover the cost for the flight, hotel, food, and transportation. However, the money saved from the cancellation of Homecoming will be able to cover all of these expenses for all of the Leadership students.
At NSLC, the students who participate will acquire new leadership skills, investigate a future career through intense simulations, go to extraordinary site visits and interactive meetings with real leaders in their chosen field.
Instead of using the first quarter to plan out Homecoming, Leadership will use that time to volunteer at local organizations and charities.
If the attitude of students changes over the course the next school year, Leadership will consider bringing Homecoming back. But as of right now, 2015 is the only school year with a confirmed cancellation of Homecoming.