By Sarah Olander

PA held its first Sadie Hawkins dance as the first winter dance in three years on Saturday, Jan. 25. The last winter dance was held in 2017, with another planned to take place January 2018, but was cancelled due to a lack of ticket sales.

Being the first winter dance for several years, SCA was worried they would not get enough interest to make money. Senior SCA officer Alex Hakim said, “We didn’t know if we were going to make enough ticket sales, but once we did we were super excited.”

SCA used several publicity tactics like posters, social media blasts, and walking from class to class during advisory in order to spread interest for the dance. 

Hakim said that “the dance had a lot of seniors, which made it super fun.” Though the dance ticket sales were less than for homecoming, senior turnout was high, making the dance fun for those who went. 

In order to encourage proposals, two free tickets were offered in a contest for the best proposal. The winners were freshmen Jaime Yang and Michael Yang with the poster “Can I be the Yang to your Yang at Sadies?” 

Jamie Yang says she’s known Michael since middle school and came up with the poster slogan herself. Yang said that “Sadies was more fun with the amount of people that were there. It was a smaller group, but I felt like we bonded.”

Sadie Hawkins dances where the girl customarily asks the boy to attend with her, is derived from an old Al Capp comic strip called L’il Abner,” where once a year the women got to ask men to get married.

The idea for a contest came from senior SCA officer Ally Palalay. Palalay is in charge of publicity for SCA and was browsing Youtube for ideas for the morning announcements when she saw another school doing a competition for the best proposal. “I sent a screenshot to our SCA adviser because I know how creative people can get [at PA] and she really liked the idea,” said Palalay. 

With girls typically not being in charge of asking their dates, Palalay said it’s a fun change to have so many submissions from girls. “I’m just proud of people for stepping out of their comfort zone and seeing them be proud of something they made,” says Palalay.