Relay for Life or Senior Banquet: pick one. Both of these events  are scheduled not only on the same day, but at the same time. Many students have attended both of these events in the past, but now they can only choose one, and it’s decreasing the attendance for both events.

This isn’t an isolated occurrence. The Best Buddies Ball and Mr. Nashoba were scheduled on the same day at the same time, and this disaster was only avoided when Mr. Nashoba was pushed back just a week before it was originally scheduled to happen. Initially, both the student council and Best Buddies were devastated, but neither group was able to change their date, and were only saved when the push for a date change for Mr. Nashoba pulled through at the last minute.

Students can’t be expected to choose between two events so important to them, such as the Senior Banquet and the Relay for Life. Nearly every senior attends the banquet, and yet now they have to choose between this senior rite of passage and a massive Nashoba group fundraising effort for cancer. How can one be expected to decide to attend only one?

How does this happen? Calendar meetings are held as much as a year before these events, and yet they continue to be held on the same day, and no one seems to notice until it’s too late.

Nashoba uses a software called SchoolDude in order to schedule events, and every on-campus event must be booked here. However, out-of school events are not booked here, and this creates issues where no one is aware two important event are on the same night.

According to Dr. Graham, “basically every weekend becomes packed” with events in the spring. So many students are affected by these scheduling mishaps, and now they face an extremely difficult decision.

Alicia Burrows, a senior who has enjoyed participating in Relay in the past, says: “It’s really upsetting for seniors who are involved with Relay for Life because we are now forced to choose between it and our Senior Banquet. For people who have been personally touched by cancer, the Relay is a big deal, and having to choose between this and our last social event as a class is a really difficult choice.”

The larger issue at hand is that those who schedule these events at the same time do not understand how important these events are to students. The argument against Mr. Nashoba being scheduled at the same time as the Best Buddies ball was simply that the ball was originally going to be at a different location than Nashoba, so the high school itself was open for use. However, this would be no different than scheduling Mr. Nashoba at the same time as Junior Prom; the Best Buddies Ball is the most important event of the year for that group.

Along those lines, Relay for Life will confront a major drop in fundraising if the entire senior class, a quarter of the school, can’t participate. Seniors have petitioned administration for Relay to be moved, but the mistake was caught too late, and students are now frantically trying to find a way to make it to both of these monumental events. 

Relay and the Senior Banquet are some of the most important activities at Nashoba, but it certainly wouldn’t appear so. It doesn’t look promising for Relay to be moved, with the turf taken for sports games, and it would be almost impossible to reschedule Senior Banquet, given that function halls are unable to be booked this close to the date.

Dr. Graham states that “the only way to end up not having some overlap with events is to limit the number of total events. In other words, that could mean deciding not to run events that we have traditionally put on. I would rather have two events run on the same night with some students having to choose which one to go to, than not have an important event run because the request for the event wasn’t put in soon enough.”

While this is true, it’s more important for clubs and class officers to assure that these events are scheduled far in advance so they don’t end up on the same day. At this point, the most critical thing to do is bring awareness to this issue in order to prevent it from happening again. If that’s not done, Nashoba may just have Junior prom and the Spring musical on the same night next year.