As the second semester draws to a close, a quintessential high school event enters the works: Prom. Behind the theme, decorations and planning is the junior student council, who work for months to plan the dance. Junior officers Ava Perez, Ethan Doherty, Ainesh Tallapragada and Darin Walia share their experience working toward planning Prom.
Perez looked forward to planning an event of this scope.
“I was excited to make Prom a lot more fun and inclusive for everyone and to work on decorating a big event space,” Perez said. “I’ve liked working with my friends to plan Prom and also working with Ms. Poskin. She’s really helpful, and it’s a cool thing to do for the whole school.”
Walia shares the process behind coming up with the dance.
“Ava, Ethan, Ainesh and I had an idea to do a fairy tale theme in the beginning of the year,” Walia said. “That’s how we kind of picked it. We felt like ‘Once Upon a Prom’ would be a good theme, and we decided it would be fun.”
Perez learned the financial aspect of planning Prom was more complicated than expected.
“Working out the budget and the price of doing Prom at Hilltop versus other places was kind of difficult to comprehend,” she said.
Perez finds fostering participation for the dance to be the greatest challenge in planning an event of this size.
“Coming up with ideas to get more people to come to Prom is the hardest part,” Perez said. “We’re doing an Instagram account — we do promo posts and stuff like that.”
Tallapragada echoes that sentiment.
“I was not expecting the promotional side of Prom to be as difficult,” he said. “It is a challenge to inform the whole school about certain details.”
On the other hand, Doherty enjoyed that part of the organization and the social aspect that came with it.
“[I like running] the Instagram, collaborating with my friends and being able to be a part of something,” Doherty said.
However, Tallapragada finds filling up the space to be the most difficult.
“The greatest challenge we faced and still have to face is filling up Hilltop with decorations,” Tallapragada said. “The area is wide and tall so we need to get decorations that can fit the area.”
Doherty understands the responsibility placed upon the junior StuCo members.
“It’s a big event,” he said. “There’s a lot of pressure.”
Orchestrating this event has made Tallapragada realize its significance.
“As a freshman and sophomore, I didn’t really see the difference between Prom and the other two dances that we have,” he said. “Planning Prom has made me realize that it is much more of a celebration of the school year and almost like a reward to the upperclassmen.”
