Midwinter 2022: Secret Garden

As we enter our 2022 school year, many activities are beginning to be canceled once again. School sports and club meetings are being rescheduled constantly. Every student, teacher, and administrator are moving with uncertainty and caution. It was announced in early January, that the board cleared our schools United Student League to host our annual midwinter. The themes can range from a variety of themes, our 2019 theme was “Till the Clock Strikes 12”. This year’s overall theme has been announced as “Secret Garden”. 

Because of COVID-19 in 2020, North was unable to host the midwinter in February like it usually would be. The spirits of USL were crushed. The joy of coming together to put on an amazing school dance was taken away from us. We’ve gone into this new year with different expectations, and policies. Ordering a venue, food, and decorations all have to be done in different ways. The hosts (United Student League) start planning the dance in early December, and the class is separated into five different committees. The main focuses of the dance are publicity, Winter-fest week, elections, winter wishes, and the dance committee. All of the groups are student led, and they each put together an agenda and checklist to complete until the day of the big dance. 

Before starting with anything, the activities director of the school, Ms. Porter has to get board approval to host both a midwinter dance and assembly. After USL is given a green light, the first thing that is decided on is the overall theme, color palette, and venue. As many know, the dance’s theme was decided to be Secret Garden. With this theme, USL was going for a more forest and natural look. While they wanted to be extravagant, things needed to be kept simple. With the decorating factor of the dance, the publicity, elections, and dance committee take the reins. They focus on the look of invitations, social media posts, and how exactly to make advertisements for this year’s Midwinter more appealing to the student body. List after list is put together, seeing what decorations would be absolutely essential to the dance. USL works closely with Live Nation (Riverside Municipal Auditoriums planning company), Ms. Ramirez (a party planner), and Nick Nack  (DJ from 99.1 KGGI), to get the mood perfected. All the details are perfected up until the very day of, and every USL student works hard to make this dance as perfect as it can be.