WPEA Winter Formal

On Saturday night, students donning sweatpants and heavy coats over sparkly dresses and ties braved the dangerously cold conditions and streamed into Grainger Auditorium for the annual WPEA Winter Formal. As students ditched their boots for stiletto heels and lined up for photos, jazz music started to play in the auditorium.

Hosting the dance for the third year in a row, WPEA, a noncommercial educational radio station run by Exeter students, began planning for the dance in the fall term with final preparations taking place two weeks before winter break.

“They knocked it out of the park three years ago and made it an incredibly successful event. Each successive board has put a lot of effort into planning it, getting word out, setting up and making choices about music.”

Club members arrived two and a half hours before the dance to begin setting up. According to upper Anna Clark, the radio’s general manager, WPEA hoped to attract as many members of the student body as possible in order to remind the community about the radio station, while also hosting an enjoyable evening for those in attendance. “At one point, we even added an hour to our regular one-hour weekly meeting to determine layout, food, drinks, decorations, music, etc,” Clark said.

Clark credited Assistant Director of Student Activities and WPEA advisor Kelly McGahie to being instrumental in coordinating the event. 

WPEA Winter Formal replaced GLO three years ago, due to students requesting a more formal dance, and McGahie attributes the success of the following years’ dances to the club members involved in the first Winter Formal and the successive boards maintaining it.

“That first year crew made an amazing job of getting people in the door,” McGahie said. “They knocked it out of the park three years ago and made it an incredibly successful event. Each successive board has put a lot of effort into planning it, getting word out, setting up and making choices about music.”

Winter Formal typically falls on one of the coldest weekends of January, and the planning committee ran into trouble last year. “There was a big snow storm, and the live band got stuck in traffic,” recalled McGahie.  Luckily, one of Exeter’s student bands, The Big Red Blues, took on the responsibility of keeping everyone entertained.  “[They] really helped us out, playing for an extra 45 minutes, and it was still a great event,” said McGahie.

Despite the freezing temperatures outside, hundreds of students came to the dance. “I went to WinFo mostly to hang out with friends and to experience it for the first time. It was really cold on the way. I’m [from] one of the closer dorms, and I was shivering throughout the walk,” prep JaQ Lai said. “WinFo felt like one of the best chances to make the kinds of memories I would look back on fondly as a senior.”

Clark echoed Lai’s sentiment, stating that the WPEA members’ efforts paid off. “Winter Formal was extremely well-attended,” she said. “Very shortly after the reception started at 8:30, the lobby of the science building was packed with students excited to greet friends and take pictures at our ‘photo booth.’”

During the reception, students in the auditorium sat at tables lit by candlelight and enjoyed jazz by The Big Red Blues, featuring senior Lucas Stevens on bass, senior Oren Stern on drums, upper Dylan Yin on alto sax, upper Justin Shao on tenor sax and upper Ryan Miller on piano.

After their performance, the music switched over to Peat Moss and the Fertilizers, a professional band from Long Island, performing on the other side of the auditorium with an open dance floor. They played songs ranging from “Shut Up and Dance” by Walk the Moon to “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers. Lead singer Steve Mecca, singing with the synthesizer, was a highlight of the night. Upper Samantha Olmsted praised the band for playing a wide range of genres. “It was nice to have a live band. I also liked how some of the songs we could sing along to,” said Olmsted. “For the songs that I did know, it was super fun to jam out to the lyrics.”

Lower Anna Fahey agreed with Olmsted and lauded the band. “They were really interactive with the crowd and they would talk to you, and you could tell that they were having fun, so that made you have fun,“ she said. “They played a lot of songs that people didn’t really know, but it was a lot of fun for people who did.”