After canceling last year’s Homecoming Dance due to the COVID-19 lockdown, Pali Associated Student Body (ASB) welcomed Dolphins back on Oct. 23 for a night of festivities.

Leading up to Saturday’s dance, Spirit Week activities included Pajama Day on Monday, Anything-but-a-Backpack day on Thursday and Blue-and-White Day on Friday. The celebration continued with a Pep Rally on Friday and the Homecoming football game that evening.

The theme for the dance was “Pali Comes Home,” representing Pali students returning to campus for the first time since 2020. The campus was plastered with colorful posters and lights leading attendees to the gym, which was transformed into a dance floor. The music blasted from the front of the gym, and a photo booth was set up in the hallway. In accordance with campus COVID-19 protocols, a buffet serving Frida’s Tacos and other individually packaged treats was set up outdoors on tables.

ASB senior class representative Kiara Zarabian, who was in charge of planning the dance, explained why it was held on campus this year.

“If we wanted to have a lot of things that we did have at Homecoming, like the lights and the food, it would have been much better for it to be at Pali rather than a venue,” she said. “I also thought it was really cute that we did a Homecoming dance at Pali after being away for a really long time because Pali really is all of our homes.”

While Zarabian saw the appeal of a Homecoming dance on campus, she said she faced some difficulties in its implementation. 

“[ASB] had to really work hard to prep because we had to set everything up. We put in a couple months of effort prior to the dance and then the three days before we were here until 11 p.m. and we came in at 8 a.m. setting up lights and food and tables,” Zarabian said. 

The school’s COVID-19 protocols stipulated extra measures that needed to be followed by ASB this year. 

“We just followed what the school told us. We went to admin meetings and stuff like that, and whatever the regulations were for Pali, we just implemented them for the dance,” Zarabian said.

Freshman Ella Hoffman said she was excited to participate in her first Pali dance, adding that it was a good way to end her spirit week. “It was really fun to just be with my friends and to see people at the dance that I didn’t even know were going,” she said. 

“I actually thought it was going to be really different, but I think [ASB] did a really good job decorating,” Hoffman added. “It wasn’t like I expected at all, there were a lot of people participating and it was much more active than I thought it would be.”

“It is huge that so many people came,” Zarabian concluded. “[ASB] really puts a lot of work into these events, and we had such a good time.”