Students Attend the Winter Wonderland
By KEVIN THANT, CHLOE LIND, WILLIAM INOUE, and ANNIKA NYSTEDT
On the evening of Jan. 11, students eagerly packed Grainger Auditorium to attend the Winter Wonderland Dance, a much-anticipated event hosted in cooperation with the Student Council Recreation Committee. With a very high turnout, the dance was a night to remember for Exonians and the students from the Brooks School who attended.
Planning for the event started long before the students returned from break. “We planned things out in detail. We assembled a group chat with 25 people.” Recreation co-head Andrew Gould commented, “This was a new system we were implementing for the winter because we wanted multiple people involved and more distribution.”
The new system divided the committee into three parts: an Instagram team, a dance planning team, and a talent show organizing team. Gould emphasized a push on relevancy for these events along with their implementation into the newly founded Dorm Cup.
This push on relevancy can be seen with the committee’s Instagram account @studentlife.pea, where students can frequently find hype for the posted events. “The student life account is run directly by the committee, meaning they can distribute information faster and more efficiently. It was definitely easier to get information out there,” said upper Robyn Davies, a member of the Recreation Committee.
Another one of the committee’s main goals for this dance was to get more people to show up early and dance. “People tend to come in late to the dances. Which means that people come in and stagger,” Davies commented. “And so while we actually do end up getting a pretty high attendance at most of these dances, the attendance isn’t for the full period of time, and it means that a lot of people aren’t overlapping with their friends, which is unfortunate. So there was a big push this dance to try to get people to show up at the beginning of the dance.”
One of the main ways they achieved this was by introducing dorm points; people would earn more points towards their dorm on the Dorm Cup leaderboard if they showed up earlier.
“This was another big thing about this dance we were very happy with—people got there, and we were able to get people dancing pretty early. And in the past, these dances, people tend to trickle in, but we found that having this point system got people there on time and got them to get in and start dancing.” Gould commented
Many students seem to agree: “The Dorm Cup definitely made it more relevant as tons of kids were posting on their stories.” upper Mathilde Senter stated.
Lower Celia Ephrem further remarked “Through Instagram, I’ve seen exposure of the dance with people reposting to get dorm points, as well as updated posts from school Instagrams. In this way, I think the dorm cup increased relevance, leading to better promotion and turnout.”
In terms of success, “This was by far the most people at this dance at a particular point.” Gould further commented. “What was frustrating for me was that there were some difficulties with the music, and I think that the consistent feedback we get from people is that they want better music at these dances,”
Lower Euphoria Yang agreed, “More people should dance, go in the middle of circles, and the DJ should play more of the requested songs.”
However, there were also contrary opinions. Upper Bea Prairie thought the dance was “Worse.” She also found the numerous posts on Instagram promoting the dance to be “unnecessary and annoying since most people already knew it was happening.”
Lower Chloe Meyer commented, “This dance was worse because the DJ was not as skilled as the last one, which was also not skilled. It was also worse because the dance was hosted in Grainger, not Love Gym.”
The committee has set up numerous students to receive feedback and report back to the planners, who use that feedback to improve future events.
There has been a big shift with the Recreation Committee, which was newly appointed last spring to make these dances fun for the student population, especially with the stigma held that Exeter dances “can’t be fun.”
“I hope people appreciate that effort compared to previous years where there haven’t been this many dances.” Gould reflected. “Our real goal is to make things as enjoyable as possible.”
The Recreation Committee has been on a roll lately, pushing towards relevancy and getting more people to the dances than ever before. The Winter Wonderland Dance was a major success, especially in student turnout. Many students also had a good time, despite some differing opinions mainly based on the music and DJ. With more events coming in the future, such as a talent show and a bake-off, all culminating in the grand dorm cup, students can be sure that their Exeter weekends will be better than ever.
