Sam Klein
Print/Podcast Editor
Webster and Kirkwood High Schools have been coming together for the annual Friendship Dance before the Turkey Day football game since 1939.
The dance has taken place every year since, not including 2021, when the dance was canceled due to COVID-19 and. It was then held separately by the two schools to reduce the possible spreading of the virus.
That year Webster held it’s “homecoming” dance in the courtyard as another prevention for the spread of COVID. Since then there’s been some debate over whether the dance is better together or separate.
Students brought this debate to the high school administration and they chose to hear out the students. This was done by talking to students. and even the parents club, according to principal Dr. Matt Irvin. After talking to the different groups, Students were surveyed during their advisory period.
The survey was conducted last school year to see what students would prefer. A majority of the students voted to have the dance separate; however, the percentage of students who wanted the dance separate was not enough to end an almost century-old tradition. The results were 49% for ending the traditional Friendship Dance and 47% of students saying to keep the tradition. Over 3% of students did not respond.
On Thursday, Sept. 27, the survey was put out again during Advisory to see what the results would be. The results were another 50/50 split, which again did not constitute the changing of the tradition.
About if he could see the dance becoming a more traditional individual homecoming dance, Irvin said, “Yeah, I mean we’ve looked at it the last two years, I think for us to change something so rooted in our school’s history and tradition… for me and our administrative team we’d really want to see some compelling strong data to make a change, and we just didn’t see it. So is it possible? Absolutely, but I think right now the consensus of the school is one that is not really a vast majority of our students want us to look at something different.” Irvin said.
Students and staff have mixed opinions on the topic of what should be done with the Friendship Dance.
Activities director Jerry Collins talked about the history of the dance and its weight. “I think historically and traditionally it’s very cool. We’re very unique, in that I’m not aware of another set up where two rival schools come together for a shared dance, more or less our homecoming dance, for both schools, so from that perspective, I think it’s very cool,” Collins said.
Some students like senior Ava Lamitola feel it would be better separate from Kirkwood. “I think it should just be with Webster because it would be really crowded and we [students] don’t really know anyone from Kirkwood,” Lamitola said.
Some students like junior Dayton Stahl enjoy the Friendship Dance being with Kirkwood though, considering that there are some students who are friends with Kirkwood students.
“I’m okay with the friendship dance being with Kirkwood because since I work at Oberweis, I have friends that go to Kirkwood there, so I’m excited to see them all there, and we’re planning to take a picture with all the Webster kids who are there and the Kirkwood kids who are there,” Stahl said.
Other students like senior and STUCO member Simon Greenblatt have a more neutral opinion. “I mean I feel like it’s fine. It’s crowded I guess just because no one has a big enough space for two thousand kids but you know, I don’t think it makes that big of a difference,” Greenblatt said.
With Kirkwood being officially invited to Webster for the Friendship Dance, planning must begin. It starts with logistics like how many tickets can be sold.
“It’s always important that we talk about safety procedures…how many outside guests we’re going to have. Making sure we’re [with Kirkwood] on the same page with all of that, then coming up in the next couple weeks, we’ll start getting the tickets ready to be sold,” Collins said.
Collins elaborated on how this would look. “The process for doing that and making sure we advertise it to all our students and their parents so that every student has the same opportunity. We can’t allow, with the two schools combined, we can’t just have open ended tickets. There had to be a limit somehow, just for safety reasons to keep it from getting too big, so we want to make sure everyone knows how to get a ticket if they choose to,” Collins explained.
With Webster, it’s a challenge to be able to sell tickets to all students because of the size of the space available. “It’s a challenge to have it at Webster Groves High School because the size of both schools and to try to do so in a safe and thoughtful manner,” Irvin said. The main worry is that the gym would be too crowded with students if the ticket sales are unlimited.
Kirkwood of course has now been invited to the dance; however, it’s still up to them if they are going to participate. “I mean, they can always say they don’t want to come, I don’t suspect that’s the case though. I expect they’ll come, and I think we just now are thinking about ‘okay how do we make this work,’ and the environment we have is not, it’s a little small for two schools to be in so we’re trying to figure out how to make that work the best we can,” Irvin explained.
Planning is the next step that comes with knowing if the dance will be held together or not. Regardless, it would be Webster’s job to plan this year. The student organization in charge of organizing the dance is STUCO, and this year it’s run by a specific dance committee which is headed by junior and student council secretary Emma Patneau. The theme for this year’s dance is “Out of This World” as in a space theme.
“We have to pick out a theme for the dance and then we have to start brainstorming ways we can decorate…I then have to hand the charges over to our treasurer to figure out what we have in our budget to get that,” Patneau said.
After the budget planning is done, it bcomes time for organizing
“Then it’s about organizing time to come in and set up everything and organizing DJ and figuring out ticket sales and stuff like that,” Patneau said.
From a planning perspective Patneau shares her opinion on the dance being held with Kirkwood. “Personally I’m one of the people who’s anti Friendship. I think it would be so much easier and more chill if we just did it with Webster. I really enjoyed it my freshman year when we just did it in the courtyard, but I do understand tradition, and it’s nice that we only have to plan it every other year,” Patneau said.
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Sam Klein- Print/Podcast EditorThis will be Sam Klein’s first year on ECHO Staff, but she also made several contributions while taking journalism class her sophomore year. |
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