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Jilli Foley
DECA International Career Development Conference and East Prom are both scheduled for the first week of May this year.
Internationals is in Nashville, Tennessee from Wednesday to Sunday, while prom is the same Saturday on May 2 — creating a conflict for students.
DECA students competed in state March 1-3 in Manhattan, Kansas, where the top three placers in each category qualified for Internationals.
Out of the 43 students who qualified to go to International, 33 students have decided to go to Prom instead of competing at Internationals that weekend. Currently, 10 of the students that qualified are planning to go to Nashville.
Marketing teacher and DECA advisor Mercedes Rasmussen remarked that while she understands the students’ decisions, it’s upsetting they have to choose between the two events.
“Unfortunately, this was just a decision [the students] had to make and its sad that they don’t get to experience both,” Rasmussen said. “But I would never ever expect them to choose International DECA over their prom.”
Qualifier and junior Brooke Blair believes that the competition is a big opportunity to learn and show off her hard work she has done in her marketing class.
“Internationals is a super cool opportunity that not a lot of people get to do because you have to win top three in the state,” Blair said. “That’s a big accomplishment in and of itself.”
While Blair was confident she was making the right decision in choosing Internationals, senior Olivia Smith heavily debated the tough decision when choosing between DECA and Prom — both of which would be Smith and her partner’s last. For Smith, the hardest part of choosing the dance was putting the class time she spent preparing to waste and missing out on the good opportunity.
“[My partner] and I worked so hard on our project,” Smith said. “We spent so much time on it and were really proud of ourselves and wanted to show it off, but at the same time it’s our senior prom and we were really torn up deciding between them.”
East’s STUCO has been planning Prom since last May, making it challenging to change the date after all the details are finally coming together.
“It would be a difficult process to change the date because that day was the only day we could do with the venue,” Junior Stuco member Sullivan Goettsch said.
Since DECA Internationals consists of students all over the world hosting 20,000 kids from 7 different countries, their are some rumors that it will be cancelled due to the pandemic of the Corona Virus.
“Although Internationals is an amazing opportunity, I don’t know how safe it is right now,” Rasmussen said.
As of right now, 11 have officially decided to go to DECA Internationals while the rest chose to attend the last and most fun dance of the year — Prom.
“Internationals are so big that even if we did go, we probably wouldn’t have been placed so we just decided to go to our last high school dance instead,” Smith said.
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