To conclude the “Westview Games” winter pep rally, Ava Traub (10) and Camryn Goss (10) eagerly revealed their spirit board to the crowd of students, announcing the winter formal dance theme as “MORP: Miami Nights Neon Lights,” Jan. 9.
The event was held at Wicked West in downtown San Diego, Jan. 31, with about 170 students in attendance. Surrounding the DJ booth and dance floor, ASB set up photo booths, an appetizer buffet, and a soda bar for students. Goss and Traub were in charge of the preparations, including acquiring all of these amenities. Months of planning went into budgeting and deciding on a venue, but first, the pair had to agree on a theme.
“We needed to [think of] more outgoing ideas, and we thought having a ‘Miami and neon bright vibes’ [theme] would make for something more interactive and fun, and something to dress up for,” Traub said. “I think the upperclassmen were excited about it because they’ve had winter formals that haven’t gone well in the past, so they were excited to try something new too.”
To get approval for MORP, Traub and Goss presented ideas to the rest of ASB and worked together to decide on the specifics, including the food, venue, and theme. During this time, Traub and Goss were in contact with several vendors and different venues.
“A couple of months ago, we were reaching out to venues, trying to budget and make sure that the ticket prices wouldn’t have to be too high,” Goss said. “We wanted to make sure there was going to be food included, drinks included, and we had to go down to these venues during school, tour them, and contact vendors asking if they were able to come to our event and support us.”
Planning a school-wide event posed many challenges, and Goss said the biggest one was choosing a location to host MORP.
“Finalizing what venue we were going to go with was the hardest,” she said. “There’s a lot of different things to be worked out with the budget, and also promoting, trying to make sure everyone was able to get the information, and making our spirit boards for the rally, because it was just us working on that.”
Along with the difficulty of picking a venue, Traub said there was added pressure to meet the many time constraints they had during the preparation process.
“There were specific deadlines for when each aspect had to be planned out and finalized,” Traub said. “You have to start months in advance to find the right dates. We had to change our date from the 5th to the 31st because the venues we wanted were all booked.”
Throughout the planning process, Traub and Goss received support from adviser DJ Sosnowski with budgeting and other class presidents with brainstorming ideas.
“For the venue hunting, we did have Kayla [Traub (11)] and Brooke [Lanski (11)], the junior class presidents, help us explore and get some ideas,” Traub said. “They’re planning Prom, so they gave us some of their venue [ideas] that they weren’t considering as well.”
Once all the logistics were finalized, Traub and Goss publicly announced the theme at the winter pep rally. Goss said that she felt the initial student reaction consisted of mixed opinions.
“When we first revealed [the theme] at the rally, I think a lot of people were confused because obviously Westview has never done it before, but I think some people were excited that it was a more ‘hype theme’ than previous winter formal dances,” she said.
Despite the initial student response, Goss said she found the dance to be successful and was proud of the final result, which reflected all the time and effort that went into planning the event.
“When [Traub] and I first went down to the venue on the day of MORP, it was really nice to see the venue decorated and the whole atmosphere was really pretty,” she said. “It was nice to see our vision come to life.”
Hoping to serve as next year’s junior class presidents, Traub and Goss said they gained useful skills and knowledge to prepare for future ASB events.
“I think it was a good experience to be able to plan an event like this for Westview, and especially because Prom is something that we would work on next year as junior class presidents,” Goss said. “I think we definitely learned time management through the experience, and [worked on bettering our] communication with other people.”
Traub said she was satisfied with the work they put in and was glad that they took a risk.
“It was a good learning experience to get an idea of how everything should flow and work,” she said. “We wanted to try something new, and I think it did have a good turnout.”
