In the hours leading up to winter formal, many students’ schedules involved grooming, photo taking, dining out, and spending time on a party bus. The party bus’s destination, however, was not actually Winter Formal.

Oddly, the party bus was headed instead to the Cave–the Oread’s basement bar that occasionally hosts parties directed for high school students. The location of dances that actually seem to bring excitement and pleasure to students. The buzzword that has become the ruination of school dances at Free State.

Junior Molly McCord followed a similar schedule, one that revolved around a party at the Cave rather than Winter Formal.

“Nobody that I was with wanted to go [to Winter Formal],” she said.

However, McCord’s friends do not keep her from frequenting other school dances: she individually prefers not to attend those.

“There is nothing about them [school dances] that I enjoy,” she said, “and nobody. It’s not very fun.”

While the school dances don’t offer anything for McCord, the Cave supplies a better experience for some students.

“More people go [to the Cave] and it’s a more fun atmosphere,” McCord said. “People are excited to be there, they aren’t excited to be at the school dances.”

Sophomore Geoff Peard, who organized the Winter Formal’s after party at the Cave last year, provided a party for students like McCord, who sought a more lively atmosphere.

“I just kind of wanted everybody to experience just a tight party, just wanted to throw something cool just for everybody to enjoy,” Peard said.

Peard also speculates that the Cave may appeal to more students because it doesn’t confine students the way school dances do.

“I feel like students don’t feel as trapped because they’re not at school,” he said, “not around the school environment, they have more freedom.”

The Cave also doesn’t inflict constraints that any school-sponsored dance does.

At the Cave, there is no uncomfortableness of having teacher-chaperones watch students get their groove on, the frantic search for a partner during the ever-awkward slow song, limitations of who can attend and breathalyzers that chase away any potentially intoxicated students.

Although he may hold responsibility for igniting a trend of high school-thrown parties at the Cave that rally students’ genuine enthusiasm for dancing, Peard still attends the more eventful school dances and insists he doesn’t attend all school dances because he’s busy.

Despite being required to attend Student-Council-sponsored dances as a StuCo representative, junior Bailey Sullivan sympathizes with students like McCord who don’t enjoy school dances.

“They probably hate dancing . . . [and] don’t want to hang out at the school for additional time,” she said.

The Cave proves that students who don’t attend school dances don’t necessarily abhor dancing, but rather that students need an environment other than a school cafeteria  in which to let loose.

With rumors of Lawrence High’s supposedly successful, highly attended dances, Sullivan insists that ultimately, students themselves decide whether the dance is gratifying or not.

“Everyone should come to dances,” she said, “because if everyone came, they would be a lot more fun. That’s probably why LHS’ are more fun because people go. If everyone just developed a good attitude and got excited to go it would be more fun.”

Perhaps the secret to success is not eliminating the competition or ridding of protective measures, but adjusting the attitude in which students regard school dances in order for them to enjoy the iconic social event for high schoolers.