By: Hilite Staff

Recently, the PTO decided to keep the lights on during this year’s Homecoming dance. According to  Administrative Assistant Amy Skeens-Benton, the PTO wants to make sure the students are safe, and in order to do that, they need to see the students. So this year the PTO made the decision to add can lights around the perimeter of the gym. The PTO tried to have the security lights kept on at last year’s Winter Formal and it resulted in a massive backlash. Students started a mosh pit, and the DJ had to temporarily turn off the music.

In addition to the can lights, there will be more chaperones this year on the dance floor, which will create an awkward environment for students.

The PTO’s concern is understandable, and changing the lighting from the security lights to the can lights does acknowledge the problem to some extent, but keeping the lights on is not the answer. Apparently, the PTO thinks that turning the lights on at the Homecoming dance will not affect the event’s popularity.
But having the added lights at the dance will ruin the atmosphere for the majority of the students and may, in fact, become a detriment to attendance. It’s not a pep assembly or a sporting event; it’s a dance and therefore should have a different ambience.

There are much better ways to prevent provocative dancing than adding can lights to the gym. Keeping the lights on will not stop students from “grinding.”

To start, dance organizers should put up signs at the entrance warning students not to dance provocatively. That way, all the students would get the message and would be warned of the consequences beforehand. Second, chaperones must decide to do their job diligently this year and administer consequences consistently to those who choose to break the rules.

Homecoming makes a large profit for the school, and without it, there may be setbacks in the school’s budget. If having extra lights becomes the norm for all dances, there will without a doubt be a heavy decrease in attendance.

The last thing that the school and students want is for the Homecoming dance to fade into unpopularity, so the PTO should consider these alternatives if they want to keep the event’s attendance up.

The Homecoming dance has been a tradition here for many years and has always been a highly anticipated event. The whole point of dances is for people to dance and certainly some students will take advantage of the situation by dancing “provocatively,” but there are other alternatives to handling these situations rather than punishing the whole group–most of whom choose to follow the proper decorum.