Leadership is hosting the first annual Spring Dance at AHS. The dance will take place on March 21 at 8:00 p.m. in the Main Gym. Tickets for the dance will cost $10 and can be bought at all lunches.

“We took a vote on whether or not to have the dance and more than half of the class was for it, so that’s what we decided on,” Leadership student Eric Mejean said.

The theme of the dance is “Color Craze” according to posters put up around the school.

“The theme is a sort of neon out, we’re looking to have a lot of neon colors, neon lights and black lights,” Leadership student Melissa Pratt said. “We wanted to kind of give it a rave-like feel without it being an actual rave.”

“We knew we wanted to do something this spring since the only dance we currently have is Homecoming.” Leadership adviser Carmen Bartley said. “We debated doing a Sadie Hawkins theme, but ultimately decided that we wanted a casual dance so that seniors aren’t having to pay for a formal dance and then for prom.”

While Bartley helps to supervise the planning process, most of the ideas come from the students in the Leadership program.

Bartley’s role is mainly as a financial adviser to the students and as a facilitator for their ideas.

The students themselves are the ones that come up with the ideas.

“Many other schools have winter or spring dances and we thought it would be kind of fun to have something different besides the very formal homecoming and prom,” Pratt said. “In the past we’ve heard that kids might be interested,” Mejean said. “Not everyone gets a chance to go to prom, so we decided to have another homecoming-like spirit week in the spring.”

The Leadership students did not have an easy time planning the spring dance. It is an entirely different process than planning an old tradition than beginning a new one.

“One reason it [planning a new event] is difficult is promoting it to students because they’re not used to it like they are to, say, the homecoming dance or prom,” Bartley said. “So it’s getting the word out there and making sure that everyone knows about it and is excited about.”

There is also nothing for the students to base the dance off of since this is the first time that a Spring dance is happening.

“The planning process is kind of starting from scratch because this is the first time that we’ve done this,” Pratt said. “So we had to come up with what we’re going to do for decorations, how we’re going to deal with security and stuff like that.”

Students can buy tickets to the dance at all lunches.

For the juniors and seniors a percent of the proceeds will go into their prom funds.

“50 percent of seniors ticket sales go towards their fund, and 30 percent of junior proceeds will go towards the junior class,” Bartley said.

Leadership is hoping to use the dance as an opportunity to raise more funds to be used for future events.

“We hope to break even with ticket sales, so we hope a lot of people will come out,” Pratt said.