Bear River students can’t jive with new prom ticket prices.
Bear River 2017 prom tickets cost students $50, an additional $5 from previous years, and Bruins are not pleased with this inflation.
“We’re going to a country club that is literally across the street from the school, it’s not that exciting, people all live there, if we’re going to pay $50, let’s at least go to The Ridge,” said senior Kaity Nat.
Both the 2016 and 2017 Bear River proms were hosted by the Lake of the Pines Clubhouse, a convenient but not-so-glamorous venue located directly on the lake in LOP. For many, the Clubhouse is not the ideal location for prom, but the venue is still cost effective, so other expenses must be taken into account.
“We did it at Lake of the Pines, and they give us a pretty reasonable deal,” said Leadership teacher Matt MacDonald. “But the other difference is just things that we pay for in general, like desserts, drinks, sodas… the linens for the table cloths, the photobooth, so there’s a lot of other outside expenses.”
“I just find it a little annoying because not everyone has that much money,” senior Drew Callipare said.
In fact, according to Principal Amy Besler, around 24% of the student body at Bear River is on Free and Reduced Lunch, although that number does fluctuate throughout the year.
“Prom is one of the most iconic and memorable high school experiences and it’s really important that anyone who wants to go should be able to,” said senior Adri Moses. “I understand that costs need to be covered, but prom should be something that’s accessible to everyone.”
An extra $5 may not seem like much, but to a high school student, that is still a significant amount of money.
“That’s half an hour of work for me and half an hour is not fun, so $5 is a lot of money,” said Nat.
Callipare even questioned the use of the bumped prices.
“What do they even use the extra money for?” he asked. “Did it go directly to prom or are they just stingy?”
The reason for the increase is largely due to the increase in spending on the event by Leadership.
“Basically last year, we did make a little bit of profit off of prom but not significantly,” said Mr. MacDonald. “So this year, because we’re spending more money on the DJ, we’re getting a bigger photo booth, we’re having the limo take more trips and renting the limo for longer, we decided that we had to kick it up five bucks.”
“I expect it to be really good and you never know, like will it be?” Nat expressed the concerns of many Bear River prom-goers.
Senior Breeze Davis assured that the money would be worth the experience.
“The decorations are going to be awesome this year,” she said. “I know people are putting a lot of hard work into that, so I think the whole vibe is worth the money.”
Ultimately, high school students are not going to be pleased when it comes to price increases. A mere $5 agitated students who were preparing for prom, and the expectations were not entirely met. Decorations and commodities were provided, but certainly not worth the extra money. All in all, this prom was underwhelming, but we can hope that next year might be better.
