The Jesuit High School junior/senior prom is May 17th, at the Wingspan Event Center.
Prom is one of the biggest events from the year for any high school, and Jesuit is no different. A staple for all upperclassmen, an event as big as prom requires dedication, time, and a lot of planning to make the event successful, safe, and a night to remember for everyone.
For Jesuit, all of this dedication, time, and planning falls on student government, who have an enormous responsibility for the event.
“Student government finds the venue, finds the DJ, gets all the decorations, and identifies the theme. Basically, student government runs the prom,” Dr. Exley said when asked about the role student government has in prom.
Dr. Exley has taken over teaching student government for Mrs. Lakey, who is on maternity leave for the remainder of the school year.
“I obviously wasn't in the class until post spring break. Since I've been in the class, it's been a pretty consistent thought process for us… knowing Mrs. Lakey, I'm sure they started working on it well before that,” Dr Exley said.
Student government and ASB President-elect Nathan Bui echoed this statement, saying “Around a month [before prom] we set up our prom committee and essentially they’re just working out logistics…two thursdays ago they went to the prom venue, looked around and laid everything out…we’ve been planning where we’re going to bag check-in, where we’re going to set up decorations, what we’re going to put on the TV, so just stuff like that.”
Planning prom is definitely an upperclassman responsibility in student government, but running prom falls mainly on the freshman and sophomores in student government.
“It’s a student government tradition, where we get the new freshmen that ran for student government and the current sophomores right now to set up…So the juniors and seniors can go. [The upperclassmen] can obviously help up with setup and stuff like that, but it's mainly the sophomores and the freshmen that are going to be in student government next year, they're the ones who are working on decorations, setting it up, running bag check…and then the day after, they’re the ones who clean up, so they have a big role in making it run smoothly,” said Bui.
However, with all the planned fun that prom brings, safety will always be the number one priority for the faculty.
“My number one priority will always be safety, and [the students'] number one priority might be having fun instead, so student government has been working to balance those two priorities,” Dr. Exley said. “I think they’ve done a really good job at it, proms going to be safe but it’s going to be really fun also.”
All of the work student government puts in to make prom fun and safe pays off, and the result is one of the most fun and important nights of the school year, Bui is sure.
“As a sophomore, I went to the prom last year because of student government, and I saw the atmosphere. And it's, like, completely different,” Bui said. “It's probably the most fun dance, different from homecoming for sure, because, well, first off, it's just juniors and seniors, but everyone wants to be there. Like, the vibe is just amazing. Like, everyone's super happy, everyone's dancing, and the music's just great.”
