Homecoming is a beloved high school tradition. This event allows the student body to get involved in planning school activities. The Garden City high school student council puts hours of work into organizing.
“The kids in student council split up into committees and they kind of take over certain aspects. We have a royalty committee that is in charge of getting everything in line for royalty, a parade committee, a pep rally committee, a dance committee, and this year, there’s a carnival committee. The kids in student council split up into committees and they take over these different aspects” Kylie Hipp, STUCO sponsor said.
The sponsors of STUCO are truly just there to oversee and make sure things are running smoothly. The kids get to come up with ideas and do the planning. Student council gives students the opportunity to take ownership and leadership.
“I’m in the royalty group so we email the coaches and we get names. Then we do a Google doc to vote for our nominees to be on Homecoming court. Once those results came in, then we told the nominees that they were chosen to be on court. They have a period where they can back out but after it’s all set we get a doc out to vote for king and queen”, Lindsay Nelson, Health sophomore said.
The student body is a big part of the homecoming candidate process. They also get to have initiative in the planning process of other activities.
“We kind of set out a layout for everything and we plan everything. Then we also try to get permission and get everything approved before we start confirming the plan. We just make sure to keep administration 100% involved and updated. Once that’s done, when it gets close to the date, that’s when we start going through and planning out every single little detail,” Leo Aldana, Arts & Comm. senior, said.
Planning an event for the whole school can get complicated. Lots of time and consideration go into organizing these events.
“Intially, there was a lot of conflict with having the parade on Main Street, so as a solution, we thought we would try to have it up here. There’s another parade the day before homecoming, and it just costs a lot of money to have the parade downtown. So we thought we’d try it up here around the loop, which the first year we brought it back when I was in high school, it was around the loop so it’s been done before,” Hipp said.
This is the first time since the fall of 2017 that the parade will be around the high school. Having the parade at the school makes it easier to plan events after.
“After the parade on Sunday, there’s going to be a carnival. Certain groups have certain games, whatever game they wanted to make, that’s what they did. It’ll be on the football field and there will also be a bonfire”, Nelson said.
This is the first time doing a carnival since reintroducing the homecoming parade. These activities will be a way for the community to be involved.
“We’re going to have sports host games after the Homecoming parade so we can invite the community out for a more social event. The idea behind the carnival is, since Homecoming is more high school based, we wanted to bring the community to the high school instead of going out to the community. We wanted the community to feel welcome and invited,” Aldana said.
