New accommodations have been made to help Stuco in the preparation for Saturday’s homecoming dance, one of them being the use of a professional party planner.

Student Council president Wade Glover has aided in the organization of two homecoming dances on campus, and the group as a whole decided that outside help from professionals would be very beneficial because of the short amount of time allotted to prepare.

“In years before this we’ve always had a lot of time to prepare for homecoming, there’s a lot of preparation going into homecoming, like decorations, pure logistics, and organizing teachers, there’s just a lot that we need to do, and this year HoCo is on the third full week of school.” Glover said. “Last year, we were preparing for HoCo in end of October and we were preparing until the morning before. We just didn’t have enough time and we had to look at other options.”

The condensed time period for preparation has made it more difficult for Student Council to handle all the details of preparation, and a party planner has helped take some of the stress off.

“Last year we were scrambling for about a month and a half trying to get ready for hoco, and this year we really haven’t,” Glover said. ”Actually, we had a partial free day last Friday. It was just a day that was kind of sit down and think, because there wasn’t anything we could do until this week, so we’ve had significantly less work.”

For Student Council sponsor Julie Anderson, using the party planners has been a good decision.

“So far, Pop Parties has been amazing,” Anderson said. “They put together a great proposal for us and have taken a lot of the pressure off of students. They are professional and have great execution of their tasks. The lunchtime Hype Party was part of their proposal, and it was fun to see students engage and get excited. We are hoping to see some of those dance moves shown at lunch highlighted at the actual dance.”

As far as upcoming dances are concerned, the use of a party planner might not be a one time addition.

“It will depend on how this year goes,” Anderson said. “If everything goes smoothly and the dance is a hit, then we will see. It is a student decision so it is up to them.”

Sophomore Sue Slater is excited to see the professional’s impact on this year’s dance.

“I think that’s pretty cool,” Slater said. “I feel like the decorations are going to be cuter, and we are going to take more pictures.”