By Anonymous
I don’t think anyone can dispute the statement that the senior prom is one of, if not the largest, event for many high school students. Strategically scheduled post- last day of classes for seniors and before graduation, the prom acts as a final event to draw the grade together in a fun and energetic atmosphere. While the energy one would expect from the final dance was certainly present this year’s senior prom, it came at the cost of romantic interaction.
As a junior, I was unaware of the relationships present in the senior class. As such, I was unable to determine which couples at Prom had existed before the event, which couples consisted of two friends joining for the duration of the event and which couples had not decided upon their status at the time of the dance. I can say, however, that at the start of the event, there was a much larger emphasis on attendees and their dates than there was at the junior semi. Couples often decided to take multiple pictures together and seemed to stick together more often than couples at semi. Strangely, though, this dynamic was decidedly more rare in couples in which I was able to identify one of the members as an underclassman.
This couple dynamic, however, came to an end after the meal portion. As the lights went down and increasing numbers of couples migrated to the dance floor, the connections that I previously observed rapidly dissipated. Instead of staying by their date’s side, as many couples did at semi, most attendees at the prom joined large conglomerates, usually a reflection of the social groups present in the senior class. And while these large groups tended to encompass both members of any given couple, the overall structures seemed to weaken any potentially romantic moment that a couple could have shared.
Similarly to the situation at semi, the music at prom was rather ineffective in bringing couples together. At semi, the slowdance segments were sparse and separated, occurring only three times throughout the night. At prom, slowdance segments were even more uncommon, with only two true instances of slowdancing occurring throughout the entire night. And similarly to the dynamic at semi, many couples came together for the slowdance only for the duration of the song and returned to their larger groups as soon as the song ended.
While the music choice failed to bring couples together, however, it served another purpose remarkably well: it brought great energy to the seniors. Nearly every song was instrumental in fostering the energetic atmosphere that the senior class displayed at prom. As soon as the dancing began, a record portion of those present moved onto the dance floor and began moving to the beat of the music. Looking down at the dance floor from above, I was impressed to see the majority of dancers pointing to the windows and then to the wall in response to Lil Jon’s command. And after Nicki Minaj ordered the pounding of the alarm, I noticed that not only was the alarm pounding, but the vigorous dancing was literally causing the floor beneath my feet to shake.
In some ways, it was disappointing that the connections between couples seemed to dissolve with the onset of the dancing segment of the event. But in many more ways, the sheer energy that the senior prom managed to harness on the dance floor was impressive in its own right. Prom certainly reflected the idea of going out with a bang far more than it did bonding between guests and their dates.
A few years down the line, seniors may not remember how they felt about their date to prom, but in all respects, the time they had that night will be forever memorable.
