By Wells Foster
The Informer
Laingsburg HS
1st Place
Division 4, News Writing
Editorial
Homecoming is a time for school spirit, but a key part has recently been changed.
During homecoming week, students look forward to dressing in different outfits, attending the homecoming dance, watching the homecoming football game, and building parade floats. All of these activities remain unchanged, except for one: the float building.
As of the 2014-2015 school year, instead of designing floats, students will decorate a hallway within the high school based on the homecoming theme.
This year, each class will decorate their hallway based on a particular board game. The seniors chose Candyland, the juniors chose Monopoly, the sophomores chose Battleship, and the freshmen chose Risk.
Replacing float building with hallway decorating was a bad idea. The floats parading downtown brought excitement to Laingsburg, but now this iconic part of Homecoming is gone.
Floats were originally replaced due to the low attendance of float building. This change was made in hopes of having more students participate in the event.
However, floats were a staple of homecoming and something to look forward to. Classes spent hours working together to build the best float. Building the floats brought the classes together towards a common goal.
“I really don’t like this change,” junior Laura Shea said. “I loved looking at the floats; they were really cool to watch.”
Hallway decorating isn’t as exciting, nor will it draw a crowd. Only students and teachers can view the creations, instead of the entire town of Laingsburg.
Furthermore, with only three hours to decorate, options are limited as to what can be done. Students can’t create elaborate, three dimensional sculptures or use costumes to bring living elements to the decorations.
The floats were a main attraction in the homecoming parade. Without the floats, the parade is limited to the marching band and classic cars.
“I want to decorate the floats. Decorating them is more creative, and they’re a lot more fun to work on,” sophomore Blake Velderman said. “You can put them in a parade. You can’t put a hallway in a parade.”