A pair of Moscrop Secondary School moms is determined to get a dry grad celebration off the ground at their kids’ school for the first time in five years.
To make it happen, Jean Wong and Sandra Chan estimate they’ll have to raise about $12,000 by June.
“We have lost much sleep on this,” Wong told the NOW with a laugh.
Dry grad fizzled at Moscrop about five years ago, she said, after an event that flopped.
“It was boat cruise and word came out that it was boring, it was not nice weather and people were tired,” she said, “and then the following year the Grade 12s attitude was, ‘No, we’re not going to have dry grad this year.’ We just were not able to stir up the interest again.”
This year, however, a September survey showed about 70 per cent interest among grads, and Wong and Chan think they can make it work.
The first step has been getting input from students – on the September survey and through input from the grad committee and leadership students.
“We’re really trying to tell the kids that it’s their party. It’s not our party,” Wong said.
The plan at this point is to hold the event at Six Pack, an indoor beach-party venue in Richmond.
Ironically, the school gave up collecting dry grad fees this year because the alcohol-free party hadn’t happened for so many years and reimbursing parents had become a pointless hassle.
That means Wong and Chan started their organizing with zero dollars.
“We had to go to the school and the PAC and ask for money,” Wong said. “Other schools, I know Burnaby North, they start out the year with $10,000, so the pressure on us is we need to do a tremendous amount of fundraising.”
Self-proclaimed “professional beggars,” Wong and Chan have already raised $2,000 since November and will be coordinating fundraisers in the coming months.
Even if they manage to raise the necessary funds, however, Wong said the real test will be whether grads actually buy tickets.
There are a lot of hurdles, she said, but it will all have been worth it if the event goes ahead.
“We really feel that dry grad is an important event,” Wong said. “There’s always the accidents that happen (around graduation time), and now, with the fentanyl problems in drugs, you don’t want your kids out at a party drinking. That’s one of the problems that we’ve been facing because the kids want a party with alcohol, and we’re trying to convince them this is just one night out of the many nights that we can offer you a safe environment, an inclusive environment.”
For more information or to support the Moscrop dry grad, email [email protected].
