Emily Eichberg
senior reviews editor

Homecoming is more than just a high school dance, it’s an experience. Every year, the SGA does their best to get big groups of students to buy tickets and come to the dance to support the school. In recent years, it has appeared that fewer and fewer students actually attend the homecoming dance itself

Instead, groups now get all dressed up for homecoming, take all the pictures, but go out for a dinner in D.C. or somewhere further away, meaning they won’t be able to make it back in time for the dance.

The reason students are not going to the dance itself but still doing all the festivities for it is not because they do not want to go. Students are told during the time of purchasing tickets that the doors to enter the dance close at 8:30 p.m.

What happens is these groups don’t know that time beforehand while booking their buses and dinners, and already have them booked for during the time the doors close, meaning they won’t make it to the dance anyways. “Last year the doors to the dance closed at 8:30 and the bus got to school at 8:40 but had to get picked up because we were too late even though we had tickets,” junior Jessie Grinspoon said.

Another loss of students to the dance is the costs. The dance alone is $20, and if a big group wants to rent a party bus or go to dinner, it adds an additional cost that is usually over $50. Eliminating the dance itself, saves $20 that they could use for dinner and bus fees. “I didn’t buy a ticket this year because I have to pay someone for dinner also and it just gets so expensive,” junior Jack Lvovsky said.

Another reason people don’t attend the dance is because groups take a party bus into D.C. for dinner and pictures in the city. It is much more popular for upperclassmen groups to do this because they have gone to the dance the past two or three years and want to try something new. “My group is going to D.C. for the second year in a row because we wanted to try it junior year and had a lot of fun so we are going there again,” senior Mollie Greenberg said.