Darcel Rockett
Frances Harris, 18, is not a novice when it comes to the prom. Having been twice as an underclassman, she wanted her senior year at Whitney Young High School to be special.
“I bought online my first year, then I thrifted my dress last year,” said the Bridgeport resident. “But this year, I wanted the typical prom experience, so my grandma and I went to Peaches and I bought a really nice green dress. My boyfriend bought a brown suit online that he just got in the mail, but now we don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Harris and other high school seniors are waiting with bated breath hoping that their high school experience ends with an exclamation point and not an ellipsis, or to put it another way—that prom will go on and all the revelry that it promises will be delivered. But with restrictions in place for the pandemic, that’s not a given.
Jalen Jones, a senior at Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy, is looking forward to all the senior activities, including prom on June 5. He admits he and his best friend Jaleesa Foster had easily spent a couple of thousand dollars for the event. They planned their custom attire as juniors (silver, pink and white) and planned on renting a white Rolls-Royce truck with chauffeur.
District U-46 (which includes Elgin, South Elgin, Bartlett, Streamwood and Larkin high schools) has already canceled its proms and pushed back the date of high school graduation ceremonies due to schools being closed for the remainder of the school year. Others are still keeping hope alive with postponements and delays in hopes that crowds and gatherings will be acceptable before too long.
“We’re the state’s second largest district so we have five high schools and three of the five would have had prom the day that we returned (May 1) and to sell tickets and get all the logistics in place when people are working remotely, that would have been a real uphill battle,” said District U-46 Superintendent Tony Sanders.
Students all around Chicagoland are enduring this “will they/won’t they” waiting game. It’s a soap opera no one saw coming, so many already had their dresses—students such as Harris.
“My grandma says if it doesn’t happen, then I have to wear my dress around the neighborhood for a week to get my money’s worth,” she said.
Zion resident Kaevyn Williams, 16, bought her flowered prom dress in late January. According to her mother Jamila Williams, it was love at first sight.
“She saw the dress and cried because I didn’t want to buy it so early,” Williams said of her daughter, a junior at Christian Life School in Kenosha, Wisconsin (the school canceled its May 5 prom). “She said: It’s my dress, so her dad bought it. I think she was the only one who really got ahead of the curve and bought a dress.”
Students such as Mekayla Mrofka, 18, a senior at Oak Forest High School found her dress right before all the stores shut down.
The prom is slated for May 8 at DiNolfo’s Banquets in Mokena. The theme: Starry Night. She chose silver and black as her colors. And while prom festivities haven’t been canceled outright, parents such as Michelle Tancredi get updates from the school that say: “Our advice would be to put all purchases toward prom on hold at this time.”
“I think my mom cried. I think she was more upset than I was,” said Mrofka. “Everything is shut down for senior things—it’s horrible. Me and my best friend, Maddie Tancredi, we’re the editors of the yearbook and we were so excited to pass them out to every class and see what everyone thought because it was our first year being in charge. And now we won’t even get to do that.”
“Any form of prom would be fine with me at this time because you gotta take what you can get,” Jones said. “My parents are a little bummed about it because I’m the oldest, and I would be the first person to go to prom and they really wanted to have that moment.“
No definitive cancellation has taken place yet, Jones said.
Schools such as Hinsdale Central High School have pushed their May 2 prom to May 23 at the Crystal Gardens at Navy Pier. And if that doesn’t work, then the school’s Building Leadership Team will work on other options, according to Sally Phillip, director of student activities.
“If May 23 does not work, we will cross that bridge when we get there,“ Phillip said. “So many balls are up in the air all the time right now.”
Harris hasn’t heard anything about the prom being canceled definitively at the Drake this year. She admits to not wanting to get her hopes up in case it doesn’t happen.
District U-46’s student advisory group is looking for alternative dates in summer for the prom, Sanders said.
“This is hard on everybody—losing these significant moments in time—there’s just so much being upended,” Sanders said. “But if it means that we’re saving lives, then it’s the right thing to do and we’ll figure it out on the other side.”
