By Senior Rylee Light
Starting off homecoming week with nothing but excitement, joy, and high hopes, but not exactly ending that way.
Every year for homecoming each grade decorates their own hallway with a theme. This year’s seniors had the theme of horror, which was in the main hallway, as every senior class does each year.
The themes of each day and hallways are chosen by the senior student council members and approved by the student council advisors around the month of August. The theme of horror was announced to the entire student body and administrators over a week before the decorating days took place, and according to Mr. Trevor Campbell, the student council faculty advisor.
“No guidelines given to the students according to decorating, making it hard to understand the exact things they wanted and didn’t want,” Campbell said.
The student council and senior class advisors along with many of the students were there all of Saturday, along with most of the day Sunday to help with the hard work.
By Sunday afternoon the hallway was finished, and there were teachers walking around making the changes needed and approving the decorations. Also gave an early preview of the hallway to Principal Pat Frerking, giving an approval and a good job to the hard working students and teachers.
“We were all filled with so much happiness and joy to show off all of our hard work to everyone in the school,” said senior Emma Plank, who helped decorate the hallway over the weekend.
On Monday, students came through the hallway, making comments about how spooky it was.
However, the tone changed when decorations were being taken down later that day.
“I heard rumors about what was happening, and I was so confused and could feel the anger building up. As I walked down and saw everything coming down I was instantly hurt, but more confused as to why is was happening,” said senior Maddy Anderson.
Frerking, and others coming through the hallway, had taken offense to some of the ideas put up.
“As the principal, I have to sometimes step back and take my own thoughts and feelings out of the situation and look at it through another person’s perspective. As people were making comments about different parts I decided that it was best to remove them,” he said.
Not ordering that the entire hallway be removed, just the offensive parts, he asked the senior student council and the student council advisor Mr. Campbell to remove certain items. On their own the senior class decided to remove all of the hallway decorations.
“I do not agree with the decision at all. They should have made guidelines knowing the theme of the hallway,” Anderson said.
Later, when things calmed down, the student body president Jake Byrd went to talk to Frerking to understand better what happened.
”I was looking out for our school’s mission statement and the core values we represent here at Concordia,” Frerking said in response. “Some of the ideas put up within the hallway didn’t all meet those.”
All in all, the hallway decorations remained down the rest of the week. The seniors, however, did take their theme day on Thursday to dress in black to “mourn” the passing of their hallway.
“On Thursday we wore all black to commemorate our last homecoming hallway. It was sad because this was our senior homecoming, and it was honestly ruined,” said Anderson.
“Overall the problems with the hallway were true, factual problems that needed to be dealt with. The way they were handled weren’t ideal, but that’s how it all happened,” added Campbell.
Savannah Codling and Alexa Hoover contributed to this story.
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