by Rebekah Roth, GHS Blue Ink
The coronavirus pandemic has been affecting the world for over a year now, but unlike last spring, Garretson School has stayed open, and there will be the long awaited prom this April. Although, for the safety of the students attending, a few precautions have been implemented.
Not only will masks be mandated for everyone in attendance this year, but prom will not be hosted in the old gym. Additionally, with student council director Jodi Gloe no longer working at Garretson, students are unaware of who is currently managing prom. The Blue Ink staff interviewed Principal Long to ascertain information about these changes.
Q: Who has been running prom since Mrs. Gloe left? A: “Mrs. Gloe is still taking on the lead role. She’s getting the things in order and is going to be around for the decorating. I’ll be helping obviously too, just like normal, but Mrs. Gloe is still taking on all duties she was going to do prior to leaving.”
Q: Are masks mandatory? A: “Masks are going to be mandated at the dance. We won’t mandate them for the grand march, we’ll let kids go through the grand march and all that stuff without a mask on and take pictures. Then we’re going to ask them for the dance to try to do their best at wearing their masks.”
Q: What other precautions are in place? A: “We decided not to eat here so that was kind of one of the precautions we took because one—a lot of kids didn’t want to eat here, and two—they didn’t want to be sitting in masks the whole time.
“For other precautions we’ll try to spread people out the most we can for the grand march and kind of get people away from each other as much as we can. Other than that we’re just going to do some monitoring of symptoms and make sure people are feeling okay.
“I don’t think we’re going to take temperatures or anything like that, but basically just keeping an eye on the trend lying with COVID when we get closer, and hopefully if it’s continuing to stay low...I think we’re going to make the dance floor a little bigger too if we can.”
Q: Other than those, what are the big changes for prom this year? A: “I guess a big change is that we’re not having the dance in the old gym. We’re having the grand march and the dance in the new gym, and the only reason we did that is because we just didn’t know what was going to happen so we saved some money by doing that and not buying quite as much decorations...”
Q: What will be done to make sure people are upholding these rules? A: “We’ll continue to remind people to put their masks up and do the best we can with it. We understand it’s hard, but we’ll just remind people consistently that ‘Hey, please put your mask on, please have your mask up.’ We’re just going to ask people to do the best they can.”
Q: Do you think there will still be an average turnout at prom this year? A: “This is probably as big of a prom as we’ve had in 4-5 years; that has a lot to do with how big the junior and senior classes are...Right now over 50 couples signed up, which is big for us. It looks like we’re going to have a good turnout.”
Garretson’s prom is April 10. Other than these new adjustments, the event will be proceeded with the same as years before.
Update 4/1/21: The Grand March will be held on April 10 at 6:30 p.m. at the new gym, with doors opening at 6:00 p.m. While there are no limits on attendance, masks are highly encouraged. The dance will begin after spectators have vacated the gym upon completion of the Grand March.
