Q&A with Mrs. Skeens-Benton

Q: What was it like having Bill Clinton come to CHS on April 28, 2008?

A: Actually, it was really neat. He came to speak about environmental issues, and we had to have the Secret Service in. It was really neat; our students got to meet a former president, and he went and shook, I mean anybody who came up, he shook their hands. It was just a really great experience for Carmel High School.

Q: Of all your time at CHS, what would you say has been the most memorable event?

A: When I was a student, they did Jell-o wrestling at a convocation in the varsity gym. I remember that. If you go to the library and get the 1988-1989 yearbook, like one of the first pages there’s a picture.

Q: In the past, CHS conducted an event called “Houndstock” every year; what was that like?

A: Houndstock was when it was an all-day event on a Saturday and bands would play. And at the end, the faculty band, Ten Days Pending, would play at the very end. And they’d have fireworks, and it was really a fun cool experience.

Q: Why doesn’t CHS host Houndstock anymore?

A: The real reason is that the time putting in to organize it and everything that went into it wasn’t worth the amount of students that were coming to it. The only students that were coming to it were like, a band would come in and their 20 friends, and then they would leave, so the cost outweighed what it made and the interest, I mean people stopped going, so it wasn’t worth the time and effort to organize it. I hate that because I loved it, but the real reason was because nobody was going to it anymore.

Q: If you could bring back one discontinued event from your past years at CHS, what would it be?

A: I think when everyone dresses up for the trike teams and wears their costumes on Friday of Homecoming, I would love to see that come back. It was always fun just to see how creative (the costumes would be). One year students dressed as the statues in Downtown Carmel in the Arts District, and so each one of them was one of the statues and that was so creative and cute. Another year they dressed up as KISS. And it just got creative, and it was fun and positive. And I would like to see kids go back to doing that.