On Thursday, March 26, an email was sent out to the juniors and seniors with a way to opt-out of the prom court nominations, along with a space for students to put in a preferred name or nickname instead of having their legal name from PowerSchool in the form.
This is a stellar change, and a great step towards an opt-in system that would be much more beneficial to the students of Bellevue West who are wanting to attend and participate in prom.
With the way the old nomination system was set up, every junior and senior were emailed a Google form full of their grade’s names, of which they used to vote. While that was far better than the archaic system of pencil and Scantron, it was still inefficient. The list of names was simply copy and pasted from PowerSchool and sent to be put into a form, with little regard to schedule conflicts, availability, or any preferred names.
Another downside to the old system was how it was organized. Given that the names were copied and pasted from PowerSchool, it opened up the unfortunate opportunity of a transgender person’s deadname, or legal name, to be broadcasted to some unfortunate individuals who may use it for harm. Even then, the system wasn’t beneficial to those who used a more preferred or recognizable nickname, like a ‘Mildred’ who goes by ‘Millie’, or an ‘Anastasia’ going by ‘Annie’, or even someone going by their middle name rather than their first name. If I didn’t know my friend Austin had a legal name of Blake, I wouldn’t know who to vote for when trying to vote for them unless I knew their last name with the old system.
“You’re under your birth gender, [birth] name, all that, if I’m correct, that definitely has got to be changed,” junior Charlie Luster said.
And change did happen. With the way the system now currently stands, students are given a chance to quietly sign themselves out of the prom court nominations list, along with being able to put down a nickname, preferred name, and even if they want to be under a different category than the one that PowerSchool and the law say they should be under.
Luster’s previous suggestion perfectly outlines the recent change made to the system.
I still believe that an opt-in system would be more beneficial. Of course, it’s possible that people may end up forgetting and not signing up to be a part of the court, as is with anything that you need to sign up for. Junior senate leader and Government teacher Tara Patomson agrees with this point.
“You have a hard time getting students to respond,” Patomson said. “I would never hear from [them], if we gave them, like, ‘go to this email’ or ‘go to the school form and ask.’”
However, there is more than one way to get students to opt-in rather than an email. It can be posters with a QR code around the school, in the more frequented spaces like the commons or the hallways. People around the school hang up posters around for other occasions and reasons, one more wouldn’t be disastrous.
Pivoting to a proper opt-in system may narrow the number of people you may be able to vote for, but it ensures those who are interested in being a part of the court are properly represented, and those who don’t wish to be a part of the court can quietly omit themselves, but still be a part of the celebration.
“But I think that especially, with having a large student body and having just people that might not want to participate, I think that would actually cut down the workload too for the people that run prom,” English teacher Bre Potter said. “If it was like a volunteer thing, like, ‘Hey, let us know if you want your name there,’ and then the voting happens. So that way the people that want it the most are getting the opportunity.”
Whether it be Google forms attached in an email, or posters with QR codes around the school, students should have a choice as to whether or not they want to be a part of the prom court. And if they decide to participate, they should be fairly represented as themselves, and not what the law says they are.
With the way the system is currently pivoting towards, the students of Bellevue West are beginning to be properly represented the way they want to be.
