By Mia Walvoord
Editor-in-Chief

On October 26, Lake Forest Academy’s Student Council hosted its first Halloween dance in Crown, complete with a student-run haunted house. This year, Student Council worked in tandem with the prefects to build a more comprehensive evening for students.
When asked about the motivation behind Student Council’s additional efforts, Senior Class President, Cher Li, explained that the “marketing of the dance was not appealing, so attendance was pretty low in the last few years.”
Student Council really amped up promotion of the event this year by continuously making morning meeting announcements and showing short videos during morning meetings in the weeks prior to the dance. They hoped to shed the unsavory stigma around the traditional “Fall Dance” by changing its concept.
Li emphasized that “…changing the idea from a Fall Dance to a Halloween Party was meant to attract more people.”
The haunted house was manned by a dedicated crew of juniors and seniors and was arguably the biggest success of the night. Students entered the volleyball locker room in groups of three, dodging their bloody peers in pursuit of a key at the end of the back hallway in order to escape. The line for the haunted house extended all the way down the locker room hallway as students anxiously awaited their turn.
It was also decided that the dance would be shortened to an hour-and-a-half, as opposed to the usual two hours, in an effort to entice people to stay throughout the whole event, instead of just showing up halfway through and leaving early. Junior, Ramya Herman, assumed the roles of both attendee and DJ this year. According to Li, Student Council was extremely excited about the energy Herman had to bring to the table, and they were optimistic that her efforts would help drum up some excitement at the event.
The traditional “format” of the dance was not the only thing that changed about the night. Van runs to various fast food chains, which have historically been popular among students (especially boarders) were planned to take place right after the conclusion of the dance. In addition, scary movies were shown in Atlass and Ferry in an effort to incentivize a larger student turnout by making the evening a more holistic and multifaceted event.
The dance undoubtedly garnered a much greater number of student attendees in comparison to past years. Student Council clearly put a lot of thoughtful effort into their planning. It certainly seems that they were successfully able to improve the community’s attitude toward the previously underwhelming event.