A king will be crowned at homecoming

The+homecoming+crowns+for+king+and+queen.+Photo+courtesy+of+Lauren+Thom+18.

The homecoming crowns for king and queen. Photo courtesy of Lauren Thom ’18.

Lauren Thom '18, Staff Writer

After much support was shown last year for the nomination of a homecoming king, Student Association (SA) has included boys to the homecoming court ballot this year for the senior class.

This year, students from the freshmen, sophomore and junior classes will all vote for two girls from their grade that have not been on homecoming court in previous years. The seniors will elect three boys and three girls after two rounds of voting. This is the first time that both a boy and girl will be crowned king and queen at the homecoming football game, SA advisor Laura Distelrath said.

Distelrath said she believes most students are pleased with having boys on homecoming court.

“When we had nominations last year for homecoming court, we put a question that asked if (South students) would be interested in crowning a homecoming king as well,” Distelrath said. “Over half of our student body said that they were interested in having a king, so that is why we pursued it.”

Co-chair of the nominations committee, Mickey Kuchta ’19, said that currently only boys are being nominated to the senior homecoming court because SA didn’t think it would be necessary to have a boy from each grade. Distelrath said they weren’t sure if the interest would be there for the underclassmen.

“We figured we would try it with seniors and see how it goes for a year or two and then reevaluate from there. With SA, especially for the last couple of years, we really have been trying to evaluate our events each year and see what we like, what is a good tradition we are happy with, what could be improved, or what should be eliminated to make room for something else,” Distelrath said. “This is an ongoing conversation, so after it happens this year then we will evaluate and get some feedback and see what we want to do in the future.”

In addition to a homecoming king, the voting process is now done online instead of using paper ballots, Kuchta said.

“It’s the first year we are doing this, so we are trying to work out all the kinks,” Kuchta said. “There are posters around the school that have a link and a QR code that you can scan.”

Distelrath said she hopes that online voting will help to eliminate the amount of time that it takes in class, and also to give students several options.

“They can (vote) in their third hour but they could also do it from home, in the halls, during lunch, or before and after school,” Distelrath said.

Co-Chair of nominations committee, Julia Turnbull ’18, said towards the end of last year, SA began talking about ways to simplify the nominations process.

“One of the proposals was to change the way we do ballots, and online voting came into play, so we moved forward with it,” Turnbull said.

Turnbull said because the workload to count ballots had been so high in the past, it’s nice to have a new system that’s more efficient. Because it is now much easier to count the votes, they were able to add the boys to the ballot.

“This is the first year South has ever had a homecoming king, so we’re really excited to bring in a new tradition,” Turnbull said.