The Halloween dance for 2013 has been canceled. The SAC says that the dance has been canceled this year because students have been requesting change. The dance has been going on for several years, and it came as a shock to the student body when it was canceled this year.

Many students didn’t even know it had been canceled. “I was looking forward to the dance. I didn’t know it had even been canceled,” freshman Oona Prozinski said.

“We’ve gotten some feedback in years past, and normally the Halloween dance is really close after the homecoming dance, so they’re really close in time. People aren’t all that excited to go to another dance after they’ve had Homecoming really recently. Also, the Halloween dance just hasn’t been that fun, and people were wanting some changes. It’s been going on for at least 10 years. We’ve had some low participation with the Halloween dance, and we want to change it up so people will want to be involved,” senior Claire Foussard, co-president of the Student Activities Committee said.

Although many of the staff members of the school didn’t like the dance in the years it had been going on, senior Victoria Guest liked it. “The Halloween dance was always my favorite. I went to it every year.”

“As a teacher, I always prefer to not chaperone dances, because it’s a bit uncomfortable as to what the rules are around dances. I think the students like it, but I’ve never really cared for any of the dances,” Upper School history teacher Ben Bollinger Danielson said.

The student body seems to agree that is was time for a change. Officially, the dance was canceled because the participation at the dance in years past has been less than in the other dances, and people wanted a change. People had been asking for quite a while for it to be canceled, and the Student Activities Committee have decided to act on the issue.

“It was kinda fun last year, because it was different from the other dances,” junior Maggie Clark said. “But I’m happy it was canceled.”

“I thought that the dance was pretty fun. It was a little too close [in date] to the Homecoming dance, though. I think it was a good idea to cancel it because then the breaks between the dances will be more even,” sophomore Kyle Salverda said.

“I don’t really know why it was canceled, but from what I understand, that students wanted a different dance, so they moved it to a winter dance, a Sadie Hawkins one,” Bollinger Danielson said.

The dance will be replaced with a Sadie Hawkins dance on Feb. 8. Until then, the next dance for freshman and sophomores will be the Valentine’s Day formal dance on Jan. 11.

Students, especially the girls of the school think that this is a great new change. But some people have concerns about the whole point of a Sadie Hawkins dance, and, specifically, the girls only being able to ask the guys.

“It will make girls think that this is the only time they can ask a boy out to the dance,” senior Maggie Clark said. “And what if people want to go alone to a dance?”

SAC already has a solution to the problem, which was brought up to the co-president at one of the Thursday Gay-Straight Alliance meetings and was well addressed.

“When we promote the dance we are going to try and make it clear that people can go in groups, by themselves, or ask anyone they want to,” Foussard said.