As senior DECA officer Lewis Brown prepares for the annual Sadie Hawkins dance, he said the barnyard theme for this year is nothing new.

“This year isn’t Halloween themed (like last year), it’s barnyard themed,” Brown said. “It’s always been the theme, we just like to change it some of the years but this year we decided to stick to the regular Sadie’s dance.”

Brown said DECA members help plan the dance, through publicity and decorations.

“Right now, we are in the process of planning and selling tickets and designing posters to put up throughout the school that is barnyard theme and we are just going to decorate some things,” Brown said.

Junior Finnegan Reddan said he looks forward to the theme’s recurrence.

“I’ve never been to Sadie’s, but I am planning on going this year. (The theme’s) something, it’s interesting,” Reddan said. “I mean everyone wears a flannel you know.”

According to DECA co-adviser Sophia Ross, although DECA chose a traditional theme, room for creativity still remains.

“There’s been talk about possibly trying to have it inside and outside, depending on the weather, like a bonfire (and) going on a hayride around the school,” Ross said. “Just typical fall Sadie Hawkins activities.”

Brown said he hopes the dance’s outcome reflects the DECA members’ effort in preparing for the Sadie’s.   

“We’ll have a lot more food. We are doing a little food tasting, (and) we are going to put up more decorations,” Brown said. “Hopefully the vibe or the atmosphere will be a little different, and I think it’s just going to be like we’ve put in a lot more effort.”

Ross said DECA strives to make the dance available to all students, echoing the initiative that began this year with homecoming.

“We absolutely are taking (accessibility) into consideration, and I think that that’s one of the reasons why all of our dances are here at the high school, so it’s more accessible for students. And as you know, if it’s at a school, we don’t have to rent a hall or have food and beverage minimums, so that brings the cost of tickets down as well, so yes out ticket prices will be very similar to Homecoming,” Ross said.

Sophomore Sarah Wojtasiak said she appreciates the non-formal aspect of the Sadie Hawkins dance.  

“Yeah I think it would be fun,” Wojtasiak said. “I thought it was like a great opportunity see other people’s costumes and how people express their creativity and get to socialize.”

Brown said he feels the Sadie’s dance has the potential to be the most widely attended dance at Park.

“(My goal is) that we have the same attendance as other dances, people get more involved and Sadies isn’t the lowest attendance dance,” Brown said. “It’s like as fun or funner than like the other dances.”

Ross said she believes the preparation required for Sadie’s benefits DECA members.

“I think it’s a really good experience for students to apply their business and marketing skills to communicate to the student body about what’s going on, promotion skills, their selling skills, and then just working together as a team to plan a special event,” Ross said.  

According to Ross, the Sadie Hawkins dance acts as a fundraiser for DECA, unlike the dances planned by Student Council.  

“DECA does this dance as a fundraiser in hopes for us to raise funds to allevia

te some of our fees for our different conferences that we go to and our competitions, so we look at it more like having an activity to raise funds for all the members in DECA,” Ross said. “This fall leadership conference that we’re going to costs each student $80 to attend, and so we use it as one big fundraiser to alleviate some of those fees.”

According to Ross, all DECA members are selling Sadies tickets for $10. The Sadie Hawkins dance is at 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Nov. 2 in the high school fieldhouse.