When the School Board’s Community Collaboration committee opened up the meeting for public comment on Sept. 17 last year, there was one thing attendees wanted to hear about: changes to Homecoming.
Just days into the 2024-2025 school year, the Hastings High School Student Council voted to change the longstanding structure of Homecoming, from electing a Homecoming king and queen to instead selecting a single ‘Raider Crown Winner.’
This change was met with hostility by many.
The change was public via a Raider update on Sept. 9, 2024 which came as a surprise, even to many district officials. It read:
“One change this year is with regard to the selection and recognition of student ‘royalty.’ What has not changed is that the HHS student body will elect student peers who will be recognized at the pep fest and football game, and they will also vote on a student to be honored with a crown. What is different is that student royalty will not be selected specifically by gender. They will be presented as individuals, and a single student will receive the final crown.
“We are committed to an approach that is responsive, purposeful and informed. Our intent is to facilitate a process that is representative of all students at HHS, and to ensure balanced representation of students without requiring them to participate with a partner. This decision follows a multi-year review of our Homecoming practices and ongoing dialogue with our HHS student leaders and advisors. Student council officers engaged in research that included soliciting feedback from a number of surrounding school districts to seek context and best practice.”
Nearly a year later, the student council is set to revisit that decision.
At the August 27 freshman open house, senior class officer Charlie Reemer greeted students and told them about student council and the various school activities it oversees.
As to what big changes awaited the student council in the upcoming school year, according to Reemer, the first discussion would be revisiting Homecoming.
This shift away from electing a king and queen was done in part to stop students from being forced into couples a change which had previously occurred for the district’s Sno Week according to High School Principal Scott Doran.
Instead of walking with a partner, students would choose a “person of influence” in their lives who would walk with them before the student body. According to Doran, the change to homecoming to crown a single student rather than a couple was built in part off that Sno Week decision and the discomfort cited by students of being paired into couples.
“A number of people are not comfortable being a forced couple in front of the public body, their student body and parents that are invited, so that’s one way they can address that,” said Doran at the September 17, 2024 Community Collaboration meeting.
At that meeting, Doran apologized for the timing of that letter, saying, “The decision that came down from the student council happened very quickly this year. Usually, we have at least until the end of September, a couple weeks into October: 100% my fault not to communicate that the second the student body notified me,” but stood by the student council’s ability to make the decision calling it “a building decision.”
According to Reemer, who was one of the students to vote for the change last year, “way more people wanted to go back,” to the original Homecoming format. Both Reemer and junior class officer Ellory Kurtz cited a poll earlier this spring asking students if they liked the new format. According to Kurtz and Reemer, of the roughly 500 student respondents, a majority voted to return to the previous format.
Another reason cited for the change back was the community backlash to last year’s decision.
Part of that backlash was approved later that night as the School Board had its third reading of Policy 540: High School Student Council, which according to Vice Chair Jessica Dressley, was directly due to the changes to Homecoming made last year.
Director Mark Zuzek called the policy a response to “longstanding traditions being changed,” at the May 14 work session.
The new policy allows the superintendent to veto any decision made by the student council and emphasizes that decisions be made with the support of the student council advisors and building principal.
This policy was created in part by referencing other similar policies in nearby districts according to Dressley, but “it’s because of homecoming.”
The policy also requires the student council to collaborate broadly on far reaching decisions:
“Decisions that affect the entire student body are expected to be made through a collaborative process that considers diverse perspectives and actively seeks input from all students.”