Interstate Studio 39065

Students at this year’s homecoming dance parade around the room in a conga line.

The phrase “dance music” brings up thoughts of “The Cupid Shuffle,” “Watch Me Whip,” and the occasional slow song. This year, however, senior Donte Hopkins is disregarding tradition and trying a new way of picking what music to play at school dances, letting the students choose.

“I decided to do this after hearing a vast quantity of internal dissent spreading due to the low quality of music over the course of my four years at West, pooled with my own desire for better tunes to bust a move,” Hopkins said.

Making the change proved a tough feat. Hopkins had to go through multiple channels just to get his idea heard, and it was even more difficult to get it approved.

“I asked the activities office who I believed controlled all things including dances, who sent me to history teacher Annie Wayland and the student council,” Hopkins said. “After attending a student council meeting and badgering them for a while, science ASC teacher Susan Anderson talked to me about setting up the survey for the upcoming dance.”

After getting the idea approved, he had to figure out how to get students involved. Ultimately, Hopkins decided to set up a stand at lunch for a few days, where students could write on a slip of paper what they want to hear at the upcoming King of Hearts dance.

“The votes are collected in a box, and then the votes per song are tallied and put in a document which is then sent to the DJ so they know what we want to hear,” Hopkins said. “The DJ should play music similar to if not exactly the requests.”

Students’ reactions have been varied, with everything from just not caring about the song selection to voting 18 times.

“I was so excited when I saw that we could vote for the music,” said freshman Juliane Pautrot. “I love Fall Out Boy, but their lesser known songs rarely get played at dances. I put in a couple of ballots for ‘I Don’t Care’ by Fall Out Boy, because it’s a great dance song that DJ’s rarely play.”

Despite the quick success of the voting, Hopkins warns about thinking that the dance will be completely different than past years.

“Even if someone voted for a song 20 times, people should still request a specific song once they get there to make sure they hear it,” Hopkins said. “I’m strongly in favor of George Michael’s ‘Careless Whisper.’”