BY JULIA SAFRIN
Prom is a time when students dress to the nines with a handsome man or beautiful girl by their side. Prom is a momentous event that students look forward to all throughout their high school career.
In order to put together such an extravagant event, the cost is high. Over the course of the four years of high school, each class is responsible for raising their own money to pay for prom when the time comes. One of the ways that class officers raise money to fund prom is through the sale of class T-shirts.
The popularity of the annual class T-shirt designs vary by class, with students either liking or disliking them. This year, however, a large concentration of the junior student body disliked their class shirt design. So much so, some juniors were boycotting buying a class shirt.
“I’m not getting one [a class t-shirt] honestly because of the design and because it looks kind of childish,” junior Katie Behr said.
Some juniors were boycotting buying a class shirt.
The T-shirt is red with white lettering. On the front it says “Class of” and below it, it has hands forming the numbers “2-0-2-0” in sign language. The slogan, “The Future Is In Our Hands,” is adorned on the back. Like the shirts in the years prior, this shirt was designed by the junior class officers and approved by the class sponsors and Principal Doll.
“All [of] the class officers contribute to design the shirts. [We] collectively try to decide on a shirt that we think everyone will be pleased with and then we all vote on it,” Class of 2020 President Nicole Nelson said.
In past years, polls were put up on the Class of 2020 Twitter account where students got to vote between two shirt designs. Whichever design received the most votes would be the one printed on the official class shirts for the given school year. This system, however, was not implemented this year.
“[We] collectively try to decide on a shirt that we think everyone will be pleased with and then we all vote on it.”
“The reason we didn’t do a Twitter poll this year is because the past two years we did one we didn’t get very many responses and people were still unhappy with them [the class shirts],” Nelson said.
The dislike of this year’s junior class T-shirt could be heard through a series of groans and disapproving looks when it was unveiled at the junior student assembly at the beginning of the year. The design did not sit well with the members of the Class of 2020, who were already irritated from this year’s junior parking dilemma. Junior Rylee Horton decided to take the matter into her own hands, by designing her own class shirts and selling them for $15.
“Many people in the Class of 2020 were complaining [so] I decided to do it to make the juniors happy, considering the parking situation and the fact that we have not had the same guidance counselor for two years in a row,” Horton said.
The boycott of the class shirts and the purchasing of unofficial class shirts may affect the funding for the Class of 2020’s prom and other activities. Juniors have had a rough start to the school year from their perspective. However, prom is a year and a half away and certain funding is necessary to end high school with a bang. As the Class of 2020 officers would agree, the future is in their hands.
Photo courtesy of The Class of 2020
