Saint Louis High School experienced a huge shake-up as to how homecoming court will look this year, when it was announced that “all” of the Seniors who were nominated would in fact represent the senior class. This was announced during an assembly Sept. 14.

This is a huge shake up because under the old system, the senior class would only have six representatives total. This decision nearly doubled the number, with the 2018-19 class having 11 Senior representatives.

Student opinion is split on this decision. Homecoming court member Brian Conn offers, “I think for the most part it’s better. The more people we get included the better.” Fellow homecoming court member Aynslee Koutz agrees, “I think it was really surprising to everybody, but, I think that it may be a good thing, or it may be a bad thing. We’ll find out after this year. But, for the people who got nominated, it gave every one of us a chance, and we didn’t have to narrow it down, so it’s a good way to start off senior year with everyone getting a chance to be queen.”

On the other end of the spectrum, senior Alexis Beeson complains, “I don’t really like it. I think that halftime is only 12 minutes long, and we’re always crunched for time anyways and now we’re just gonna make it even longer than it has to be, and it takes away from the tradition that we’ve had.” Beeson’s biggest issue is the fact that in the past the senior class has been represented by only six students, with only ties in the voting process breaking this tradition. This decision seems to be dismissing this tradition entirely. It is unclear at this moment whether or not this will change the voting process significantly because in the past, there were two sessions of voting for the seniors. One for the nominations, and then the finals. Administration has not commented on how this will be moving forward.

Despite the seemingly divided student opinion, the change is here to stay. This year marks a new tradition, and will forever change how homecoming occurs for SLHS. The Shark Scene wishes the newly crowned homecoming court representatives the best of luck, and congratulates them on being the class to christen the new changes.