The Brave News

by Johnathan Gonzalez and Kris Leal

To kick off the new 2019 school year, last Friday the ASB teams from St. John Bosco High School and St. Joseph’s hosted a welcome dance, “Neon Lights.” Along with the anticipation for the fun of the dance, the Bosco community also exclusively came together to have a “Student Life Kick Off” to remind students at the start of the year of the tenants of our Salesianity. 

This year’s welcome dance gave the chance for people outside of the Bosco/St. Joseph’s community to see just how close the community is, while the “Student Kick Off” gave the chance for new Bosco brothers to gather and get a clearer sense of what Bosco is all about. The kick-off, held in the Thunderdome, was marked by a panel discussion that brought people within the community together to share their experiences being supported and enriched by our home, school, church and playground.

This year’s new welcome dance, “Neon Lights,” brought some students from outside the Bosco/St. Joseph’s communities to share in the community-building.

“The dance was sick. I didn’t expect any of this. I thought it would be whack,” said public school junior Makhi Hall.

However, as Mr. Avila said, “Mostly a lot of freshmen attend the welcome dance, since it is their first high school dance.”

The welcome back mostly allows the new incoming freshmen and new students from St. Joseph’s and Bosco to be able to mingle and meet more people. Some things students should take not of for the future are the rigid student policies and regulations that St. Joseph’s explains on their website. There is an entire subject about school dances on the St. Joseph’s website. There are eleven subjects that are enforced at dances.

The dance was held at the Flynn Center on the campus of St. Joseph’s. There was a DJ placed toward the far wall of the gym, where there were four large boxes set up that would have neon colors that glow in the dark that people were allowed to stand on.

The DJ was very interactive with the students asking if they were having a good time and also using special effects, such as fog machines, during different parts of a song that cooled down the students. The DJ was not set on just playing rap music, but he played a large variety of music.

Bosco junior Antonio Negrete, however, didn’t quite appreciate all the variety.

“The music should have been much better and should have been changed a lot more during the dance because one of the most important parts of the dances is the music that is played,” said Antonio. “I don’t know why they were playing 90’s music.”

The majority that went to the dance were freshman, and hardly any seniors attended. One bad part about the dance is you were not allowed to take water into the gym and the water sold out fairly quickly, as students subsequently struggled being in the dance when it was so hot.

Despite these minor hiccups, Mr. Avila, an alum of Bosco, said their has been a lot of general improvement in the dances.

“Since I came to Bosco to now, the dances have gotten much better in the sense that the attendance levels have gone up alot more,” Mr. Avila said.

The kick off built a different type of community, as the community time brought us together as “Bosco brothers” and also gave us the chance to hear a stories told from Bosco faculty members Mrs. Judith Day and Mr. Bobby Linares.

As said by Giancarlo Garcia “The kick off was pretty cool. That we got to hear the stories from people I didn’t really know and now I see them differently with more respect now for even stepping up and publicizing what has been going on in their life,” said junior Giancarlo Garcia.

The highlight of the kick off had to be Mrs. Day’s heart-warming reflection of the loss of her husband and the community support she received in response from various colleagues and students.

The community time gives the students space to escape from school work and make time for themselves and God. When those two are put together, students can better take control of their destinies and live out Don Bosco’s “Oratory Model.”