Pali celebrated a pair of events in the week of Jan. 27: the homecoming to their original Temescal campus and the Homecoming Dance.
Associated Student Body (ASB) rescheduled Pali’s Homecoming Dance, typically hosted in October of the fall semester to celebrate the conclusion of Pali’s football season, to the beginning of the spring semester due to a lack of access to Pali’s Temescal campus after the Palisades Fire.
According to sophomore ASB member Sloane Cherry, in light of so many changes, it was important to ASB to hold this event for Pali students in order to maintain tradition. Cherry said she helped organize the “Night in Greece” themed dance and believed it was a success because of its large attendance.
“We actually had more people in attendance than past years,” Cherry said. “We had around 600 students, which is a great turnout, especially for having homecoming in January… rather than having it in October.”
While organizing the event, ASB wanted to incorporate local institutions who lost business in the fire by having them cater the dance. The ASB team reached out to local businesses to help support them after recent losses and ended up gaining their services for the event.
“We reached out to a lot of local vendors in the community who were also affected by the fires, in an effort to help in any way we can,” Cherry said. “At the same time, we got a lot of love from the community, with Pizza Princess and Garden Cafe, both catering the dance.”
Even the “Night in Greece” theme was a way to relate to the Pali campus.
“We landed on a night in Greece because we thought that Pali reminded us of the beach and we wanted to kind of tie in the blues of our campus.” Cherry said.
The dance was an unorthodox way of welcoming this year’s freshmen class to Pali’s Temescal campus since they had only ever attended Pali South at the renovated Santa Monica Sears building.
Freshman Joshua Simon shared that he loved the dance, and that “it was overall a blast – the vibes were high and the music was amazing.”
“I’d say that it was a great welcome to Pali,” Simon said. “I feel like ASB put in a lot of effort because it was our big return.”
Sophomore Olivia Zhu said that she thinks the event really shaped her return back to Pali.
“A lot of my friends were worried that the dance would be a reminder of what we lost, but it was actually the opposite. It was so good to reconnect with everyone in such a fun setting while finally being back together on the original campus. It was really amazing,” Zhu concluded.
Freshman Aaron Goldberg shared his take on homecoming: “I think it was a real homecoming, not just a homecoming for football, but rather, a coming back home.”
