The Ring Dance is one of the highlights for juniors at Bethel, and many students eagerly await this typically thrilling event. However, not everyone had the opportunity to purchase tickets this year. Surprisingly, for an event of such significance to juniors, it was shared first with parents, and tickets were not easily accessible to the students themselves.

“I was able to get a Ring Dance ticket,” junior Eagle Williams said. “.. but I didn’t know about it. Thankfully, my mother did it for me though.”

Some students are so upset by missing out on tickets that they have created an Instagram account to petition to reopen ticket sales. The handle of the account is bringbackringdancetickets, and it provides a forum for students who want to air their grievances about the ticketing process. 

“My mother received more emails about Ring Dance than I did, and I go to the school,” another junior, Arjanae Andrews, stated. She also went on to say, “They weren’t telling the students, but telling the parents…of course not a lot of parents really check their emails from the school.”

The student petition is unlikely to change things though. Space at the venue this year is smaller, which in turn limited the number of tickets available. 

“I was able to get a ticket after a lot of back and forth,” said Andrews. “…There weren’t enough tickets for even half the junior class. I think there’s over 400 students and about 200 something tickets….there was an issue with the venue as well as not having enough tickets. The communication was just really bad.”

With only half of the junior class being able to buy Ring Dance tickets, this left the majority of the students whose parents missed the message feeling upset and excluded. Students that were able to purchase tickets were only lucky enough to buy one before they quickly sold out. 

“Bethel…needs to be more organized overall,” JaMya Ribbon, a junior and Bear Facts reporter, observed. “Not only with this example, but overall, they do very poorly when it comes to advertising stuff or talking about stuff. They don’t really get out [information] to the students about stuff.”

Rumors have begun to circulate that the the student council organizers will put tickets back on sale soon, but the juniors who missed out are not holding their breath. Let’s hope the Ring Dance itself is still a memorable hallmark of the junior experience and not another victim of miscommunication.