A prom like no other

From fancy dinners and dancing in close proximity, to an hour long murder mystery party, this year’s proms across the Northshore School District are drastically different from years past, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. To me, this “prom” felt more like a senior gathering with a murder mystery slapped on rather than the traditional prom experience. North Creek’s prom was a “Murder at Midnight” mystery party in Mukilteo that lasted for an hour with three different group event slots. There are no underclassmen allowed and all people attending must be North Creek High School seniors. Each group had a maximum of eight people per group. This regulation was made to stop the spread of Covid-19 and keep this event as safe as possible. Limiting the number of people per group was a challenge for students trying to figure out who at all was going to be able to attend and be in the same group with one another. Woodinville High School’s prom, on the other hand, had many differences compared to the one North Creek had. Woodinville’s prom was at the Museum of Pop Culture in downtown Seattle, going from 7:00pm to 11:00pm. One of the more interesting parts about this event was that all students were allowed to be in the museum at the same time, while socially distanced in groups of five. Attendees had unlimited access to all museum exhibitions except for the sound lab. Prom participants were informed that there would be no dancing due to Covid-19, even though there was a dance floor and a disco ball present. People spent most of their time dancing on the dance floor with nobody overseeing the event putting a stop to it. Woodinville’s prom was, in my opinion, better than that of North Creek’s. One of the biggest reasons being that Woodinville was able to have everyone come in at the same time, rather than three different time slots. Having everyone be at the same place at the same time — even with limiting groups — is better than having three different times for people to come. I am someone that doesn’t care what people do or where people gather. I would rather able to share or do things with as many of my peers as I can. Although North Creek’s and Woodinville’s prom were different from each other, both schools had to make proposals of their plans to NSD for review before they got the green light. The reason why both events were so different was due to the fact that little information was given from the district regarding what schools could and could not do. In North Creek’s case, for example, they did not know if any form of eating was allowed at prom. Once they found out that it was acceptable to have food at prom it was too late to add catering. That is why some schools across the district may have had food and others didn’t. Still, North Creek students should be grateful for any form of prom that they could have whatever was. This year had a lot more questions than if there will even be a prom this year. I understand that it was not the experience that everyone was looking forward to or expecting, but being able to actually have a prom, in whatever form it was, was a miracle.