Ever since before Thanksgiving Break, the Class of 2025 officers have been in the works of planning the Senior Movie Night that would be held on campus and open to students and their families. Acting as both a fundraiser and new event added to the list of senior activities, many held mixed notions of whether they would attend as the event drew closer. On Friday, December 6, the initial date of the event, it was announced that the Senior Movie Night would be rescheduled to December 18 to encourage increased attendance and donations, sparking discussion and varied opinions.
In a poll on the Ayala Class of 2025 Instagram page, students were asked what event they would want to participate in. Of the submitted responses, having a Senior Movie Night was chosen and the plan was put into action. Because something like this hasn’t been seen in previous years, the senior class officers made great efforts to arrange the event to the best of their abilities.
“The process going into it was I had a meeting with my activities director and my class advisor. We started planning what movie we need, what the steps were, and what money would go into this and what is required from the district,” Senior Class President Katie Trinh (12) said. “We submitted all our forms, and then we were on the road to go.”
But despite the publicity that was released to promote the event, many students didn’t feel inclined to attend, whether that be from scheduling conflicts or lack of interest. Of the students who were met with scheduling conflicts, choir and dance students felt the most targeted in the initial scheduling as the Senior Movie Night fell on the same night as one of the annual Madrigal Feaste performances.
“I was originally very frustrated because I feel like it should be the job [of activities] to make sure that you can have at least a majority of the people attending,” Women’s Ensemble choir member Isabelle Gargantos (12) said. “It was annoying on my part because usually [visual performing arts] gets thrown under the rug a lot and then knowing that the date was placed on an event that not just choir but dance can’t miss, it was a bummer because then it’s like now, ‘oh, I can’t go to this event,’ but it’s not something I can even do anything about.”
The idea of visual performing arts not being able to participate in scheduled activities is not new. Just a few months ago, it was brought to the attention of band members that the scheduled date for prom would fall on the week that they would be gone for their WGI World Championship in Dayton, Ohio. This is just one of the many cases where the visual performing arts programs have been unable to participate in scheduled school events.
However, this issue can be sourced back to the fact that planned events like prom, homecoming, and senior activities are chosen before the school year starts.
“I don’t have much to do with the scheduling,” Trinh said. “ I kind of just choose the theme and more stuff like planning into, but I don’t choose the date. [Administration] is choosing [the dates] before the school year starts because I know they’re chosen in the summer.”
While there has been initial hesitation on attendance, some students have expressed their interests in still wanting to participate in all of the senior events as much as possible.
“It’ll be a chance to get together with my friends, it’s one of the last days of first semester, and also I feel like it’d just be nice to have a break after finals,” Crystal Haddad (12) said.
Although there has been mixed opinions on whether Senior Movie Night is worth attending, we can only look forward to its turnout as the first semester of senior year comes to a close.
