Student Expectations for Secret Garden Dance

The Secret Garden Dance took place on Friday, May 9, from 6 PM to 9 PM on Rosemont’s Middle Field. Dance tickets were $25, with food tickets being an additional $15. Ticket sales went on from April 14 to April 25. Prior to the big event, students were surveyed on their opinions and expectations for the dance.
There were four questions on the survey: Are you going to the dance?, Are you going to buy the meal ticket or not?, What is your opinion about last year’s dance (Miami Nights)?, and What are your expectations about this year’s dance (Secret Garden)?. There was also an open ended question at the end that asked why people chose what they chose.
The survey received 414 responses, which is about 32% of the whole school. Out of these people, 76.1% of people, or 315 people, said that they would go to the dance, and 23.9% of people, or 99 people, said that they would not go to the dance.
58.9% of people, or 244 people, said that they would not buy the meal ticket, while 41.1% of people, or 170 people, said that they would. The reason for the high number of people not buying meal tickets seems to be that these people think that the meal ticket is overly expensive.
As for last year’s Miami Nights dance, the survey shows that 311 people have positive opinions on it, 40 people thought that it was just okay, and 26 people had negative opinions on it. (The rest of the responses were “Did not go”).
When asked “What are your expectations for the Secret Garden Dance?,” nearly half of the students who responded said that they expected it to be fun, while 57 people said that they are going to absolutely love it. 80 people said it will be just okay, while a total of 32 people had a variety of negative feelings on this year’s dance.
The open-ended question contained many different responses, with many of them being negative. Many of these negative responses criticized the theme and the price of the tickets. For example, one student wrote, “$25 is way too expensive to just walk around on the middle field… The meal ticket is also way too pricey as an add-on on top of an already really expensive ticket. Hopefully the dance will be fun though!” There were no positive comments about the price of the tickets. Although there were some positive comments about the dance theme, the majority of them were negative. Comments about the decorations were half negative and half positive. On the other hand, there were some positive comments about the dance in general.
Three ASB members were interviewed in response to the results of this survey. When asked how the dance theme was chosen, Kathryn Miranda said, “ASB separated into groups and each [group] came up with a theme. Then, we all voted on each other's [theme] and Secret Garden won.”
Another eighth grade ASB member said that the dance “costs around $40,000, … [and] the money we get from the tickets helps us make the dance as memorable as possible. Tickets have always been at this price.” She also said that ASB strives to improve the dance each year.
All three ASB members that were interviewed say that they completely understand that the tickets are quite expensive, but “ASB members sadly can’t change that,” said Miranda.
When asked the question ‘What is something you want to tell the students who think the dance is overpriced?,’ Olivia Jung said in response, “If you want a fun, well-decorated, amazing, and beautiful dance, you need to be willing to pay for it.” Jung also believes that “making assumptions about this year’s dance based on last year is wrong.” ASB has planned many new additions to the dance compared to last year. They say that these additions are “worth the wait,” “students should get their hopes high,” “you will have fun, even if you don’t like the theme,” and that “[ASB] will not disappoint.”