The Queer and Ally Student Assembly is hosting their annual Second Chance Prom, an event where LGBTQ+ students have the chance to dress up and attend a dance with the date of their choice, something they may not have gotten the chance to do in high school.
Maddy Kennebeck, Second Chance Prom committee head and a senior majoring in narrative studies, said that the name second chance refers to the idea that this is an opportunity for a redo of queer students’ high school proms.
“I think it just gives us more chances to have events and recognize that we are valid and there are communities and spaces for us and it just gives people a chance to celebrate,” Kennebeck said. “We purposely put it on the last day of classes to sort of be a bit of a celebration of the year, like ‘Congratulations! You made it through!’ But I think it’s going to be really important to the LGBTQ student body.”
William Henry, the executive director of QuASA and a senior majoring in global health, said that this event is a chance for queer students to experience the type of prom that they would have wanted in high school.
“[For] a lot of people, Second Chance Prom is important because we get to recreate prom how we would have liked it to happen ideally,” Henry said.
Met Gala is the theme of this year’s event, and QuASA is encouraging attendees to “wear something extravagant,” according to their Instagram account.
Hannah Gardiner, the drag coordinator for QuASA, said the Second Chance Prom is an opportunity for students to celebrate their identity.
“[I]f you did have prom at your school, and you’re queer, you might not feel comfortable going. Or maybe you felt like you couldn’t wear what you wanted to,” said Gardiner, a sophomore studying East Asian languages and cultures and English literature. “I know some people who are going to this prom who weren’t allowed to wear suits to their prom, because they were assigned female at birth. And so this gives so many queer students another chance to live something out, but in a setting where they will be totally accepted for who they are.”
For many LGBTQ+ teenagers, a traditional prom experience can be stifling to their sexuality or their gender identity. For Gardiner, the prom is also a chance to push back against the heteronormativity ingrained into the concept of school dances.
“We had a specific dance every year where girls asked guys, and that was the whole point of the dance,” Gardiner said. “But for people who maybe they don’t date guys, if they’re girls, or if they lie somewhere outside of that straight label, then this is a chance where there’s no expectations. You could dress however you want, you could go with whoever you want, can listen to whatever music you want, you could dance however you want.”
Henry said that as someone who wasn’t allowed to bring a date of his choice to prom at his all-male Catholic high school, this event is a chance to experience the night in a way that he wanted.
“Prom is a very heteronormative, sexist event generally,” Henry said. “…Men wear suits, women wear dresses, you take your boyfriend or girlfriend. ... For me, it’s definitely a chance to [say], ‘Let’s do prom in a way that I would like. And it gives me the opportunity to take a guy if I want.”
Other universities, such as the University of California, Los Angeles, Loyola Marymount University and the University of California, Riverside have held similar events in collaboration with their LGBTQ+ campus organizations. “Go Mag,” a lesbian publication based in Los Angeles, also holds a similar event titled the “Los Angeles Pride Prom.”
Kennebeck said their planning committee doesn’t quite know what to expect, as this is the first Second Chance prom since before the pandemic. She hopes that, regardless of identity or high school prom experience, all attendees will get the chance to experience a school dance that they deserve.
“[The Second Chance Prom is] a chance to have that titular experience that everyone romanticizes in their mind a bit, but make sure it’s you,” Kennebeck said.
The prom will be held at 7 p.m. on Friday at Casa Vertigo in downtown L.A.