School dances like Homecoming and prom come with a stigma. They’re lame. No one dances. The music makes you feel like you’re at a 2002 bar mitzvah, and it’s always awkward. So why was this year’s bRAVE such a hit?

Well, for various reasons. The first was the SGA’s in-your-face promotion via Twitter and Facebook. Second was the DJ who actually played post 1997 music. Third was the sheer number of sweaty, scantily clad people jam-

packed into one gym and fourth was the newfound popularity and interest in rave culture and Electronic Dance Music.

bRAVE was awesome. There’s no question about it. People dressed head-to-toe in neon danced until the wee hours. Minus the massive amounts of PDA, bRAVE was undoubtedly better than any school dance I’ve ever attended.

At the beginning of each year, parents form a committee to help organize post-prom, an event that lasts from one to five a.m. the morning after the main dance. The event takes months of planning and costs thousands of dollars. Kids change into shorts and sneakers and arrive to play poker, jump on moon bounces, eat food and take pictures.

During post-prom, the main gym is filled with an obstacle course, tables are strewn with candy and buffets of sandwich and pizza are everywhere. The small gym typically serves as a casino and has additional moon bounces.

So here’s an idea: let’s modify post-prom with a second bRAVE. The whole idea of post-prom is to deter kids from going to parties to drink, and now with beach week not falling the day after prom, there will be less incentive to stay at post-prom. Without the need to wake up early to drive to the beach for a week of partying, some may find more reason to leave post-prom early to go to other parties.

Though prom itself is a dance, a rave-themed post-prom would have a completely different feel. Tensions are lower and kids aren’t dressed in their formal prom-wear. Rather than changing in to t-shirts and shorts, students could change into neon clothes. A rave-themed dance has the potential to be more unique and appealing. The change in atmosphere would be so drastically different that a second dance wouldn’t feel repetitive.

Rather than spending thousands of dollars on multiple moon bounces and a “toilet race” that will entertain short teenage attention spans for no more than twenty minutes, let’s do something new.

The planning committee should move the casino to the main gym, eliminate additional activities such as the mechanical bull and feaux jousting and should spend the money that would be spent on these activities on a good DJ. The small gym would be an ideal dance floor because it provides just enough room for people to dance, but wouldn’t dominate post-prom.

Those who want to participate in traditional post-prom activities would still be free to do so, but those that would prefer to dance during post-prom would be able to in the small gym.

Though post-prom is successful every year, using the small gym as a dance floor would attract even more students, and more importantly, create a fun incentive to stay.