2 Red and Black
Homecoming: my experience running for royalty
Fall 2021
Red and Black Staff
by Samia Abdur-Rahim As a senior, attending Homecoming was a given - especially seeing as it’s my final year. But running for Homecoming Court? It seemed like just a waste of time. A joke, even. While Northwood Homecomings are nowhere near exciting as they sound, I still teased the idea of running for royalty. When I told my friends (as a joke) that I wanted to run for Homecoming, they were all for it. One of my friends even claimed that they’d seriously help me campaign. And so, in the next few weeks we had fully colored posters with my face plastered on them. Each one showed my face and pleaded with passersby to “vote for Samia Abdur-Rahim” while also supplying some non-specific threat. At first, it was extremely embarrassing. My face on badly edited photos for everyone in the school to see? Utterly humiliating. But of course, I still put them up with the help of friends. In the hallways and in multiple teacher’s classrooms - even on someone’s back. We were determined. Soon I realized that our advertising efforts weren’t enough. My competitors were advertising more than before, and I soon grew even more determined to win. So we turned to bribery. It’s amazing how many people you can get to agree with you for a lollipop. When I arrived at the dance that fateful Saturday night, I was pleased to receive a free ticket for snow cones and unlimited Capri Suns. Since I was worried about when the winners of Homecoming royalty were going to be announced, I managed to recruit my friends to arrive earlier than we normally would. The DJ was… questionable during the first half of homecoming. We danced to the Cupid Shuffle and Electric Slide, which definitely opened up the night to more fun dancing. My friends and I met a ton of cool underclassmen, saw our peers dressed to the nines, and took some nice pictures together. The red carpet (which was taped down with red duct tape) at the entrance to the Homecoming area was definitely a nice touch.
News Editors-in-Chief Lizzy Alspach Liya Tadesse Supervising Editors Samia Abdur-Rahim Jeanne Gnahoua Semira Tekle Kai Treadwell News Staff Megan Leatherwood Madison Riggs Rebecca Tran
Above: Jeanne Gnahoua (right) and I at Homecoming (Photo: Chariot staff) All this boiled down to one moment: the announcement of the Homecoming winners. By 7:15pm, the suspense had grown to a climax. We all gathered on the dance floor, our fingers crossed, waiting for that fateful announcement… to find that I didn’t win. Which was okay - I started this campaign on a whim, after all - but still a little bit of a downer. After the announcement, my friends and I grabbed our free snacks and hightailed it out of the school. There were really only 30 minutes of the dance left, but we got what we wanted and that’s all that mattered. One of my friends who can drive (love you Lizzy) took us to The Silver Diner, where I feasted on a delectable Greek salad. I thought about that salad afterwards (more so than my Homecoming loss), just as my friends thought about the waffles and burgers they got. I still enjoyed myself - even though I didn’t win - and Homecoming is probably one of those stories I’ll tell my kids when I’m old and wrinkly. Below: Scenes from Northwood’s Homecoming Dance (via Chariot staff)
Features Staff Mary Awii Aidan Lewis Michael Marquez Silas Myers Caroline Touhey Entertainment Staff Enson Cao John McLendon Barcomax Ouedraogo Shyla Rincon Anderson Solano Ruiz Music Editor Samia Abdur-Rahim Comics and Games Editor Jeanne Gnahoua Fashion Editor Malisha Gunawardena Design and Photography Zainab Coker Andru Orosco Faculty Advisor Ryan Acosta-Fox
