It was a few weeks before Prom and Aravinda Ganapathy, senior, had a plan.

“Every day during track practice, at the end of our warm-ups, we come together as a group and huddle and break it down in the middle of the track,” Ganapathy said. “To get us all hyped for practice and the workout, someone, usually a senior, gets in the middle and yells ‘WE ARE’ and everyone responds ‘MARQUETTE,’ which usually gets the attention of everyone on the stadium field.”

Ganapathy decided to play on the hype and utilize it in his prom-posal. With fellow seniors Kevin Sacks, Kyle Lang and Kevin Ganahl, Ganapathy prepared large, colorful letters and cracked a plan for after the warm-up.

“After warm-ups ended on Friday, Sacks led the breakdown,” Ganapathy said. “But he shouted ‘WE WANT’ this time and the track team responded with [Jessie Dunlap’s] name three times to get her attention.”

While they were chanting, Lang, “much like a ninja,” ran the flowers and letters to the huddle without anyone noticing, Ganapathy said. After the chant was over and they’d clearly gotten Dunlap’s attention, Sacks, Ganahl, Lang and others held up signs that spelled out “PROM?” and Ganapathy ran out of the huddle with flowers.

“Since it’s Senior Prom and it’s either go big or go home, I decided to do something a lot more elaborate than a poster to ask her,” Ganapathy said. “According to her, it was a fairly pleasant surprise.”

While it obviously takes planning to execute the perfect prom-posal, it takes arguably more planning to engineer the perfect Prom. Yeah, you go to the dance and have a jolly good time, but do you know how it all gets done?

It all starts right after the previous year’s Prom.

“We select the new venue immediately, so for this year, we started scouting venues in April of last year,” Ashley Hobbs, social studies teacher, said. “We have to find a venue that can hold enough students, serve food to that many people and is ideally close to home.”

While last year’s Prom was held at the St. Louis Ritz Carlton, this year’s will be held at the Hilton St. Louis Frontenac Hotel.

“We visited several locations that had our date available and chose based off what each venue had to offer, costs and location,” Hobbs said.

Another difference this year is the catering style: traditionally at Prom, students are catered to a full three course sit-down meal but this year the Junior Class officers have strayed away from that and took on a new approach.

This year at Prom students will have access to a buffet of horderves with six different choices to pick and choose from.

Jeff Rohlman, junior, is the president of the Junior Class officers and said dinner will consist of  macaroni balls, buffalo springroll, a beef wellington, a sesame seed chicken, a toasted ravioli and stuffed mushrooms.

Rohlman said they decided to switch to appetizers for plenty of reasons including complaints they received about Prom last year.

Many of the students weren’t able to sit where they wanted near their friends, they were forced to sit down through the entirety of the meal, and didn’t have as much time to spend on the dance floor.

Rohlman said with this new buffet style dinner, Prom will be more fun and students will have more freedom to move around.

“We didn’t just get rid of the tables; there are tables for people to sit down, take a break and eat food,” Rohlman said. “But people can still move around and dance.”

Jessie Dunlap, senior, said she doesn’t necessarily support this change.

“I think it takes away the tradition of prom where we sit down and eat,” Dunlap said. “It kinda feels like a high class Homecoming because of it.”

Dunlap said she thought that eating appetizers for food at prom would equate to lowering the ticket prices but they didn’t substantially reduce. Last year’s prom tickets cost $65 and this year’s cost $60.

“I do think that the horderves might suit more people like the ones who didn’t eat all of their food last year because they can take smaller portions and the ones who still feel hungry can take more,” Dunlap said.

Dunlap said her concern is that many students, when they hear about the horderves for dinner, will think that they need to eat before going to prom because it won’t be as filling.

Dunlap said the part that she like about prom is that the dinner served there is substantial enough that she doesn’t feel as if she and her friends need to eat before going.

“I think sticking with tradition would have been better in this case,” Dunlap said.

Unlike Dunlap, Noelle Clatto, language arts teacher, has been in favor of eliminating the sit-down dinner for a long time.

“The formal sit-down dinners, while nice, often took at least an hour and a half to complete,” Clatto said. “The majority of kids are ready to socialize, show off their wear, take pictures, dance. It’s difficult to maintain the relative calm needed to ensure the hotel staff can do their job. I’ve wanted to switch to the buffet-style ‘small-plate’ option for a few years.”

Another incentive to cut back on dinner was monetary.

“[To raise money for Prom] the Junior Class Officers solicit donations which are in turn given to the Mr. Mustang competition,” Clatto said. “That’s the biggest fundraiser and Mrs. Hobbs has taken that event to fantastic levels in order to increase revenue.”

Hobbs said this year, Mr. Mustang raised $4,000 for Prom and the rest of the cost for the venue, food, DJs and photographers would be offset by Prom ticket sales – $60 this year, down from $65 last year.

“Staff also get a menial stipend [for chaperoning prom] and they are provided with food and beverages throughout the night,” Clatto said. “But at the end of the day, I doubt that’s why most volunteer their time. It’s a great night, allowing the staff to see kids in a completely different element.”

Picking the theme for the dance is up to the Junior Class Officers.

Dory Pearlstone, Junior Class Officer, said the officers try to think of as many themed ideas as they can.

“Over the course of a few meetings, we got rid of the ones we didn’t like,” Pearlstone said. “There was a lot of debate.”

Eventually, the officers settled on the theme Frost and Flame.

Clatto and Hobbs agreed that an ideal Prom would feature students and participating adults arriving on time and not making a mockery of MHS.

“[Several] years ago, we held the Prom at the Ritz,” Clatto said. “The service was fantastic, we had a phenomenal DJ, the kids in attendance were awesome, the chaperones all seemed to enjoy the evening and there were little extras in terms of wonderful decor, strolling magicians, a fire-eater, a stilt-walker. It was, I think, the ideal Prom. I should have stopped while I was ahead that year – really, how long should a grown woman be involved in a high school Prom.”