High school is generally one of the busiest times of a teenager’s life—from practice or rehearsal six, sometimes even seven, days a week to having hours of homework a night, many kids barely have time in the day to even sit down for dinner. On top of this, students are generally also interested in attending school-wide events, such as the Hypnotist, which is one of Walpole High School’s most popular events of the year, or Mr. WHS. Although there are events going on all year-round, Spring is one of the busiest times of the year for WHS students, due to so many events going on and the spread of spring fever—a feeling of restlessness and excitement felt during the springtime.
The nice weather that spring brings along also comes with some of the year’s biggest events: prom, semi-formal dances, and the Film Festival. While these events boast some of the highest attendance rates of the whole year, often getting sold-out, many other spring events tend to get lost in the mix. Between sports practices, meets, games, play rehearsals, and club meetings, along with academic responsibilities, teenagers’ free time is few and far between. Because of this, smaller, less-publicized events—such as Student Council’s Girls Night Out event—sometimes have low attendance numbers.
Whereas other events have been long standing at Walpole High, Girls Night Out is much newer; this was only its second year being held. Additionally, Girls Night Out is an event for a specific audience (the girls), so its potential attendees are already a smaller pool of people than for most events. GNO is held to raise money for the Fairy Godmother Project, an organization which donates lightly-used dresses and tuxedos to kids who cannot afford to buy them for themselves for prom or other special occasions. Although the event is a unique one, it has failed to turn out a high number of attendees either year it has been run. Junior Lauren Regan said, “I think it’s an awesome idea for an event, but people get really busy this time of year and I didn’t really hear a lot about it ahead of time.”
Bigger events—such as the Film Festival—are publicized for months ahead of time and tickets are sold far in advance; however, Girls Night Out was not publicized very well. Student Council co-treasurer Micaela Barry said, “Although we did do some advertising by hanging up a few signs around the school, we definitely could’ve been talking the event up more and doing a better job of getting the word out about it than we did.”
Although the more popular events need less advertising because they are already so well-known, others need to be advertised thouroughly in order for events to be successful, especially during the spring. While many of the events held during the fall and winter, even newer ones—such as the Winter Ball—have high attendance records, some in the spring do not. The Winter Ball, in only its first two years as an event, has had over 170 students attend each year. But, Girls Night Out this year had less than 40 people attend. Junior Sara Murtagh, who attended the Winter Ball but not Girls Night Out, said, “During the spring, there’s so much going on, that I really only go to the things that I hear the most about. In the winter and fall I have more time to go to even the smaller events because I’m not so busy.”
It seems that the key to success when starting new events in the spring is to advertise. Barry said, “I think the only way to introduce a successful event at this time of year is to make sure that everybody knows about it weeks ahead of time and to make it sound appealing. If you can make the event sound exciting enough, people are going to come no matter how busy they are, just like students do for the Film Festival.”
