Love is in the Air: Hamber’s Valentine’s Day Celebrations

Students at the Cupid’s Court Dance | Photo Credit: Shaan Sandhu

To celebrate the romantic holiday, Valentine-themed events and fundraisers have been hosted at Hamber over the past few weeks.

The most notable event was Cupid’s Court. The Valentine's Day dance, organized by Student Council was held in the cafeteria on Feb. 9. The dance featured concession, a DJ, and a Valentine's Day themed Polaroid photo booth.

According to Wilson Liang (12), one of the council’s co-presidents, the dance has been a focus and priority for StuCo throughout the year. StuCo members, with the assistance of the club’s teacher sponsors, were in charge of organizing the dance. They worked with administration to find security guards, teacher volunteers, and a DJ. They also collaborated with Service Club to decorate the cafeteria and clean up afterwards. However, during this process, they encountered a few obstacles. 

“The DJ was a really big hurdle,” Ayana Chang (12), StuCo’s social event coordinator, revealed. “We had one DJ, but that fell through. So the DJ that we had was super last minute.” The DJ was Mark Guilaran, a Hamber alumni and a director of Skyline Productions Inc., an event production service.

The council had also hoped for the school's newly reopened store, the Griff, to be present at the dance to provide the refreshments. “We wanted to have the Griff there to sell food, and they said no. They said no very close to the dance, I’m pretty sure they didn't say no until the week of. So that was an issue.” Chang said.

In response, the Chief Operating Officer of the Griff, Priya Mann (12), stated that the meeting between Griff members and StuCo was set two days before the dance. “This was not enough notice for us to prepare, which was the big reason why we said no.”

Mann added that StuCo members asked individual Griff members in the prior week, but they would reply that they “were most likely to say no” because they “didn’t have the necessary support”. 

Despite this, StuCo was able to secure the needed refreshments before the dance happened. “We’ll be offering the chips and drinks in vending machines as light refreshments,” Liang said. “Just because those have already been pre-approved, so we don't have to go through the whole approval process on food and drinks.”

The executive members of StuCo and the teacher sponsors also had to coordinate security guards and teacher volunteers for the dance. Per policy, the dance had to have a one teacher per 30 student ratio at all points in time. In addition to teacher supervision, the administration requested that there be security guards present at this year's dance. 

“[Security is for] if anything breaks out, or if anything goes down,” Liang explained. “The teachers volunteer their time, but it's not really their job to manage those types of situations, so that's why we contacted the security firm.”

Despite these obstacles, the dance received praise from many students who were in attendance, and exceeded many students’ low expectations.

 “I found the energy was really up there, especially during specific songs. And as a slightly introverted guy, I find that when the energy is high, my energy also goes up. And so that makes it a lot easier to dance and whatnot.” Miles Young (11) told The Nest. 

“Honestly, I didn’t set my expectations very high," he admitted. “There were a lot more people than I thought there would be. The food and drinks are alright. The main attraction really is the dancing and the music.”

The dance brought out many different people from across the student body. Teresa Deruchie (10),  a dance attendee, was pleasantly surprised by the event. “I'm not really a dance person, I don't like to dance. I honestly don't know why I came,” she explained on the night of the dance. “So I was expecting to be bored the entire night, but I’m not. This has been really fun.”

The dance did, however, receive some criticism and constructive feedback. “The effort is there. I feel like some of the people here are definitely not going that hard, which is kind of sad,” said Mila Geisel (10). “For next time, I’d want the energy to be a little bit higher, maybe for the advertising for the dance. There could be people who go into the crowd to specifically hype it up,” she added.

Overall, the student body’s review of the dance was overwhelmingly positive and the turnout surpassed the expectations some StuCo members had.  “I’m very proud of the student council; we really pulled it together. It actually went really well and the student body had great energy,” Chang concluded.

Hamber’s Valentine's Day grams also returned this year. The grams were ordered by students beforehand, and then prepared and assembled by members of Grad Committee. The grams were distributed to the receiving students during their classes on Valentine’s day. 

The committee offered three different variations of grams this year, each involving chocolate and a card, with the option to add on a fresh rose or chocolate rose and teddy bear. The grams cost between three to seven dollars.

All of the money raised by Grad Committee is put towards funding amenities for the prom. This is the last of a series of events organized by the grad committee to support this initiative. “We’ve already done all of our other fundraisers. So that would include the grad hoodies and grad karaoke.” Emily Webb (12), the Grad Chair, explained.

“We received over 200 orders from students, so I was really happy with how many people bought the Valentine's day grams," Webb told The Nest.