Associated Student Body plans Winter Ball at Pacific Science Center

Pacific Science Center

Blueprint layout of the Pacific Science Center where the Winter Ball was held.

Associated Student Body is planning this year’s Winter Ball, which will happen on the top floor of the Pacific Science Center on February 1, at 7 p.m.

Every year, Associated Student Body (ASB) helps organize the Winter Ball, an event hosted at a public building outside the school. The school will hold this year’s Winter Ball in the Pacific Science Center (PSC), a local science museum, under the theme “Night at the Museum.”

ASB President Nina Ando and Zoe Thompson, senior class secretary and treasurer, emphasise the many points of interest on the PSC’s top floor, such as the Laserdome, the butterfly house and a dinosaur exhibit.

ASB is a student government which performs tasks like organizing events and giving advice to the administration.

“ASB is basically the leadership through students,” Ando said. “It’s the communication between students and teachers and our peers. It’s basically a small form of government but we make a lot of decisions through the school by connecting with the school and teachers.”

ASB starts planning the year in September and October. Holding an event like Winter Ball means finding a location large enough to hold the expected students.

“We looked around at different venues in downtown Seattle, and around Seattle, that have capacity for 1500 kids,” Thompson said. “We got that down to a pretty short list, and then we started reaching out to venues.”

Ultimately, ASB settled on the Pacific Science Center, which Student Senate, a volunteer student government similar to ASB, agreed on. Coordinating with the venue involved working over Winter Break and touring in person.

“We toured the venue and chose what rooms we wanted to reserve, and since then we’ve been emailing back and forth, picking out music, arranging a DJ, and all the other things that go into making these events happen,” Thompson said. “Luckily, since it’s Night at The Museum, we don’t have to bring in many decorations.”

The theme of the Ball has been “Night at the Museum” for the past several years, partly because it restricts the dress code relatively little. According to Ando, ASB previously considered the theme “Masquerade”, involving eye masks, but rejected it for safety reasons.

“It could be considered dangerous based on the way that people perceive masks, what people do with it, because it could be a safety concern if you can’t see people’s identity,” Ando said.

The event, while expensive to organize at around $16,000, is within ASB’s means. This is partially because they have a fund for holding events and partly because ticket sales pay them back.

According to the Ballard High School website, tickets cost $30 until Jan 20 and $40 from Jan 21 to 29, meaning the event could easily bring in well over $16,000 and make profit.