My Senior Prom was easily one of the highlights of my four years at MHS. 

Starting the 2020-2021 year school off online with no idea of if we would ever get through this pandemic, I was definitely not expecting to have a school year that was even remotely normal, nevertheless have a Senior Prom.

As we started a return to in-person school and vaccines were eventually rolled out, my school year became much more reminiscent of those pre-pandemic times that we all took for granted. Although Prom wasn’t in it’s typical format, I truly wouldn’t have wanted to end my year any other way.

The MHS Prom, in recent years, has traditionally been hosted at Hilton Frontenac, but in order to allow for more students to attend and for dancing to be allowed, our administration consulted with local health officials. The end result was a beautiful, outdoor Prom with music, dancing and of course a bunch of pictures to complete the night, all at the price of just $25 for entry.

Hoards of students tried the food trucks that were available, from coffee to pizza and pasta, steaming plates of hot food were dished out so students could enjoy the night. Because Prom overlapped with Ramadan, I was fasting and sadly didn’t try any of the food trucks, but when I was able to break my fast, I drank some water and ate one of the cupcakes the school provided, which was sweet and delicious.

While Prom was fun overall and I loved having it outdoors, there was a downside in that the dance floor was extremely small. When people started to herd toward the dance floor, it became extremely tight-knit and some ignorant students even took off their masks. Despite vaccine rollout, we are all still in the middle of a pandemic, and even if these students were vaccinated, the CDC recommends vaccinated people still wear masks when in large groups. 

I personally would’ve liked to have seen stronger regulation of masks beyond just making sure students wore them when entering Prom. Dozens of students either slipped their masks all the way down to their chins or took them off entirely when they were merely inches apart on the dance floor.

Simply making announcements periodically to put on masks or even going up and asking students to put on masks could’ve helped the problem. I understand it puts a damper on the evening for some people to be told what to do, but at the end of the day we all need to care about each other and about spreading such a dangerous disease among our students. 

I decided to attend Prom because I trusted that the administration would ensure the event would be safe for everyone in this pandemic and when they said it had been approved by county officials, I assumed it would be safe to go. Unfortunately, some of my own peers didn’t care enough about our health to simply put on a mask.

At the end of the day, though, I did truly enjoy Prom, and I appreciate all of our administrators for doing their best to make sure I had a night to remember.