By Jamie Miller and Alexa Cheaney
On Friday, Oct. 11 Grand Rapids Community College hosted its second annual homecoming dance. Put on by the Campus Activities Board, the event drew a crowd of more than 100 students for a night of music, dancing and refreshments.
Friday night’s dance was preceded by the pinkout volleyball game which GRCC won handedly on Thursday.
The dance had many fun features from free food to a chocolate fountain and music. The music was definitely good according to Susan Streator, 32, of Grand Rapids, who said her favorite part of the night was “seeing all the dancing and the songs.”
Twenty-one year old Grand Rapids resident, Kimmy Witherelo, also seemed to be enjoying herself at the dance. To her the whole thing was new.
“I never went to any dances,” Witherelo said. “The friends I brought graduated high school during COVID-19 so they also never got any dances. So we’ve never got to experience those things and we’ve kinda given up because we can’t go back to high school, but it was fun to get them out and basically have the same experience.”
So for Witherelo and her friends, this was their first-ever homecoming dance.
Taylor Pogue, 19, of Rockford and Grace Lafleur, 18, of Wyoming, were among the dance attendees. Pogue, who had in his words “never been great about following through at going to dances in high school.” So when Lafleur invited him out he jumped at the opportunity. When asked what their favorite part of the night thus far had been Lafleur said “ I love always seeing everyone dressed up, the gowns and the suits and it’s really fun.”
Second-year CAB president Brayden Smith was happy with the turnout at the homecoming dance, noting that a total of 200 people had RSVP’d this year.
“This event has definitely just been about people socializing and having fun with community college,” said Smith, “We are all about breaking that stigma just to go to class then go back home. We want it to have those top tier university style events”
Smith, who is in his last year as president, is hopeful that GRCC will continue the dance as tradition for years to come.
“We’re happy, we did it last year and we had talked about doing it again. We were like, ‘is this just going to be a trend? Is this going to be an annual thing that GRCC can host?’” said Smith.
