Student misconduct disrupts dances

PHOTO: The 2024 Homecoming dance sold out when the Winter Ball did not
reach full capacity

By Boyeon Choi

BlueDevilHUB.com Staff–

Davis High has had two school dances so far: Homecoming in October and Winter Ball (WiBall) in January.

English teacher Anthony Vasquez has been teaching at DHS for 13 years, and was the activities director for Student Government for eight years until last year. He believes that there are many benefits to hosting school dances.

“(Dances) really help students to destress and to have some fun without worrying too much,” Vasquez said.

Vasquez enjoyed all the dances he helped facilitate and plan. He finds fufillment when he’s able to bring students joy. However, there are some factors that make it hard to enjoy. 

“Rules need to be followed for everyone to have a good time. When someone breaks a rule, it breaks the night, the fun,” Vasquez said. 

Although the overall number of students cited for misconduct at dances has remained consistent throughout the years, with about one to four students punished for misconduct at every dance, Vasquez noticed a change. And it wasn’t just the outward behaviors.

“I don’t want to be that person but I’ve definitely sensed more students think and act selfishly,” Vasquez said. “Because of this, they think that they are the exceptions to (the) rules put in place.”

At WiBall specifically, there were dozens of students that Vasquez had to send away for not having tickets. They attempted to sneak their way into the dance by forging tickets and lying to the staff members at the entrance. “There were tickets that were photoshopped and copied,” Vasquez said, “so we had to stop these students from entering.”

For the recent winter ball, the ticket cap was increased to 900 students compared to the prior cap of 800. However, tickets for the homecoming were sold out, while for the winter ball they were not.

Even with the smaller number of attendees at the WiBall dance, more reports of intoxicated students were made; a total of five students.

“(The) students had to sit out, make personal statements, get breathalyzed, and eventually wait for their parents to pick them up,” Vasquez said. The five students who were determined to be intoxicated face school suspension, which might “interfere with going to the top colleges” that they have applied to.

According to the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics (NCDAS), at least 50% of teens have done drugs at some point. Out of all the drugs, alcohol seems to prevail in terms of teen usage with 61.5% of students having drunk alcohol at some point by their senior year. 

As the numbers suggest, DHS students are no different from most other teenagers. Students are being sent home from dances because of how unsafe it is for them to be there while intoxicated.

“As much as we want everyone to participate, our number one priority is safety at each dance,” DHS principal Bryce Geigle said.

Geigle believes that the two main sources of misbehavior are from the attitude and the lack of awareness of the consequences to students.

“I think that for Homecoming, the whole community was much more aware and talking about the safety aspect of the dance, (but) we lacked that discussion for WiBall,” Geigle said. “Perhaps if students knew that their behavior would lead to consequences, there would have been less issues.”

In order to improve student behavior, Geigle believes there needs to be an increase in community building activities. “My belief is when students build connections to the campus, we are also building a care for the community,” Geigle said. “I think that this will be what leads to less students making unsafe decisions.”