Before going into high school, I was excited about going to my school dances.  Everyone getting ready for a night to dress up and dance the night away. Then the year 2020 came with the pandemic, and everything took a pause. School closed down right before prom season. Even after school has opened up again, there seems to be a decrease in interest in school dances. So, what caused this sudden disinterest in school dances?

The office secretary, Maria King, the ticket sales were asked a couple of questions for dances to get a better understanding of how many students are in school dances. Mrs. King mentions that whenever there is a school dance, they usually sell around 100 to 150 tickets each week. Yet, there are 2072 students that attend Herriman High School. That’s 200-300 students that buy tickets out of 2072 students which is about 9.7-14.47%. 

She also brought up the fact that students tend to wait until the day before the dance to purchase tickets and that’s when the main office gets the most traffic. Even though ticket sales have gone up, according to Mrs. King, students just don’t seem to be as excited about going to school dances than before pandemic.

As much as people say that the school dances are one of the most exciting events during a school year, more people seem to be more excited about dressing up rather than going to the event. Even if people do go to the school dance, students have admitted that they would go for about half an hour and then ditch the entire event. There are also people that are “fashionably late” because no one arrives during the first 30 minutes of the actual dance.

However, basing students’ interest in school dances by statistics can’t be the only evidence that we can use to determine the overall interest. There are a couple of people that have agreed to discuss the topic at hand. Mr. Campbell, a Language Arts teacher, Newspaper Advisor, and former student of Herriman High gave his opinion on the changes for school dances during his transition from student to teacher. Campbell starts with “When I went to school, it was a pretty big deal whenever there was a dance. Whatever that dance was, you know like, Homecoming was obviously big and if there was a girls choice, at least in my mind I was like “Okay, am I going to get asked?” or whatever.” He indicated that when he was a student, he heard people talking about it weeks before the actual event because of how big the buzz was. He also added, “I’ll say this, there is a bigger difference, as a teacher, I see a bigger difference now than when I started five years ago. I feel like when I first started here, I always knew whenever there was a dance because the students were always talking about it, but I don’t think they’re talking about it as much anymore.” Now he believes students don’t care too much anymore since he never hears about dances or notices students conversing about it. 

Another person that agreed to the interview was Jojo Bodily, a senior who joined Herriman High their junior year. Jojo mentions that she noticed people get excited for school dances, but she doesn’t personally. Jojo states, “In my opinion, not enough gets put into the dances, so they end up being boring and no one at dances really dance anyways. Why pay when you’re not dancing at a dance?”

Whitney Mangum, a fellow senior, explains their opinion on the current situation. Whitney discloses that, “People are less interested because of a lot of factors, but in recent years it’s probably Covid related. During 2020 and 2021, lots of dances were canceled or toned down, so people learned not to get their hopes up about them.” They clarify that by saying, “People get excited for school dances, but not the student body as a whole. I personally get really excited for school dances; I love dressing up and the energy of dances is great.” Whitney plainly points out that most people don’t like dances and that getting dressed up is one of the main reasons as to why people might get excited for school dances.

Ultimately, students at Herriman High don’t have much interest in going to school dances. A lot of the decline of students going to dances has a lot to do with Covid-19. After the pandemic, more students care more about getting dressed up rather than going to dances as it can be shown by the low amounts of ticket sales. Similar to what Jojo Bodily said, there would be no point in going to a school dance if the majority isn’t interested in what the dances are supposed to be.