For the first time since the 2020 school year, Richard Montgomery is hosting its annual homecoming dance. It will be held on Saturday Oct. 16, from 6 to 9 p.m. While SGA members are trying to make the dance as normal as possible, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has caused a couple aspects of the dance to look slightly different than previous years.

    Senior and SGA schoolwide president Lulu August is in charge of the publicizing and supervising of the dance this year. She says that neither masks nor social distancing will be required for this year’s event since it is being held outdoors. “We can’t mandate something against what MCPS has said, but we are highly encouraging masks,” August said.

   This year’s dance will also take place outside on the football field, due to COVID restrictions. “It’s pretty much gonna be like a normal homecoming but placed outside,” senior and special functions coordinator Ayellet Aharanovich said.

  In addition to the change in location, the time of the dance is shifting a little earlier than usual. Montgomery County has put a noise ordinance in place, requiring the dance to end by 9 p.m.

  “I think that could be cool because we might get a chance to watch a nice sunset and just take advantage of some of the daylight,” said Aharanovich.

  Tickets are sold out now, but they were sold everyday beginning on Tuesday, Oct. 5 in room 217 and cost $25 plus a can of non-perishable food which will be donated to the local Manna food center. Distribution of tickets were ordered by day per grade, starting with seniors and ending with sophomores. Homecoming is the only event the SGA raises money from for the entire school year and as a result the price per ticket is $25.

  “We tried to lower [the price] but the thing is that…we have to account for the fact that if we can’t sell enough tickets, we won’t have enough of a budget to fund all the other things,” August said. “We can sell a maximum of 1,000 tickets, that’s like 1,000 people.”

  To keep the dance centrally for RM students but also as close to normalcy as possible, seniors are the only students allowed to bring outside guests.

  The SGA has received a lot of questions about this year’s themes. The school-wide theme for the dance is Friday Night Lights, aimed to bring a feeling of high school nostalgia.

  “It just refers to the sense of spirit, and cheer, and community that we have at Friday night football games that a lot of us I think missed,” said August.

  Similarly, the themes for each grade will be centered around teen high school movies. Seniors have Mean Girls, Juniors have High School Musical, Sophomores have Bring it On, and Freshmen have Grease. Each grade will have a different hallway to decorate based on their theme.

  “They would love people’s help when it comes to decorating the hallways and things like that,” August said. If you would like to help with hallway decorations, you can find more information on the RM SGA Instagram page @rmhs_sga.