For schools across North Carolina, February is the month designated to winter dances. Leesville used to be among the NC schools that host a winter event, but the dances could never attract enough students to cover basic costs. After years of such low attendance, the Executive Council decided to cancel the sadie-hawkins themed dance, which left students of LRHS with nothing to do between Homecoming and Prom.
Just because the Loonies don’t have an official dance, doesn’t prevent them from having their own mini Winterfest. So, several groups of people in the Leesville community got together this past weekend and held a winter dance of their own because the tradition of doing a winter dance has been around for as long as anyone can remember.
Eric Fitz, a senior at LRHS, was among the handful of people who decided to create their own Winterfest. “My friends and I do Winterfest because it’s a good way to get all of our friends together to hangout and do something fun and out of the ordinary. Also, it’s Sadie-Hawkins [style], so the girl is technically the one that asks and pays for the meal,” said Fitz.
If Winterfest is an opportunity to have fun and do something different, then why didn’t students go to the actual dance? Well according to Fitz, students don’t go to the dance because “the tickets are way too expensive, and …. it’s not very fun.”
It is evident that in order to attract students to attending Winterfest, the ticket prices must be lowered, and the music should be customized to what is popular and considered “good” to most teenagers. With so many different types of people attending dances, however, it is extremely difficult to please each and every student.
The idea of a Winterfest dance seems to be a lost cause for the Leesville community because, regardless of what the teachers and Executive Council do to make the dance enjoyable for everyone, it will never satisfy each and every person who attends. It is just easier and more enjoyable for both students and the Executive Council to simply not have a dance instead of expanding their time and energy on something that the majority of the Leesville population doesn’t want to attend.
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