The start of the second semester marks the beginning of one of the biggest projects for the junior and senior class officers: planning a combined junior and senior prom. It will be the first combined prom in recent memory and a model the school plans to follow in the future.

“We’re still just getting started, but our main goal is to make sure that the seniors have their time to shine,” junior class treasurer and secretary Allison Tan said. “We want to make sure they get everything that they would hope for, especially because they didn’t have a junior prom.”

Both class officer groups will tour prospective venues with their respective class advisers — guidance counselor Monique Young and administrative assistant Julia Peck for the seniors and U.S. history teacher Faith Daly for juniors — to help them communicate with all potential vendors and make sure they cover all bases, senior class vice president Kaylie Wong said.

Though planning for prom began in October, most details, including venue, date and theme, will be finalized this semester in collaboration with the DJ and caterer to properly coordinate the event.

“Senior class does get the final say, but we do take into consideration the junior class’s opinions because they are paying for some parts of the prom,” Wong said.

When making decisions, class officers are considering the rise in COVID-19 cases. For example, they had to rule out some venues due to location or size.

“I think that we’re definitely a bit scared that our venue might need to be changed again because the guidelines are always changing,” Tan said. “We had to make sure that our venue was outside. I think that it might be subject to change due to COVID-19 protocols, so it’s a bit stressful having the venue decision still up in the air.”

In addition to cases, the class office budget is limited as compared to past years, Wong said. While fundraising traditionally came from in-person parent nights at the beginning of the school year, this year’s virtual parent night caused a subsequent decrease in revenue. 

“We have a lot less money going into prom as previous senior classes would, so we just have to take that into account with ticket prices and everything,” senior class president Apurva Chakravarthy said. “Not having the in-person experience of planning community events for the past one and a half years is really hard because you hit the ground running during the biggest year of high school.”

In spite of these challenges, the success of recent fundraisers and initiatives this year, such as selling boba in the quad, has brought back hope. Along the way, the senior class officers have found solace and support from their advisers, other class officers and each other.

“I’m proud of my senior class office,” Wong said. “Besides [Chakravarthy] and [senior class treasurer and secretary Cheryl Wu], the rest of the senior class office is new. Even though we don’t exactly have the strongest background in class office, we’re still able to work together and come up with a lot of fun ideas. I think we’ve been working really well together.”