Last year’s Variety Show featured a girl walking across the stage eating a bag of chips.  The audience laughed unknowingly as one alumna   ran out of the auditorium upset.

This year’s Variety Show is about “taking the meanness away,” Senior class moderator Sue Greig said.  Faculty complaints last year prompted a change to the Variety Show.  “It had a real sense of trying too hard to be hurtful,” Greig said.

“This year we’re gonna take a more positive direction,” said Senior class moderator Larry Hensley, “there will be a bigger focus on student talent.”

There will be fewer comedy skits and more talents showcased such as singing and dancing.  “You have to know your audience and their level of sensitivity,” Hensley said.

Recently the shows had become a reason to outwardly mock the previous senior class.

Social studies teacher Jake Hollin participated in the Variety Show his senior year and believes that it “recently became mean spirited.”  According to Hollin, the “caustic” jokes and skits are “tough to moderate.”  Hollin’s Variety Show was more positive than the recent years, “It was really just to have fun, to entertain, to make it a great show, not to make fun of old graduating classes.”

Both Hensley and Greig would like the senior class to back off of students. “[They] can’t just focus on seniors,” Hensley said. “When the previous class comes back, it’s their first unofficial reunion, they know they’re here to be made fun of by the current senior class.”   Teachers, however, are not off limits.

“We can also make fun of teachers, who can approve it,” Hensley said.  Teachers have the liberty of approving skits that mock them, but fellow students don’t have that option.

Hensley describes the Variety Show as, “completely run and designed by the senior class.”  The senior class officers are in agreement.  “The only reason they’re making changes is the class of 2011 took it too far,” senior class president Maria Edwards said.

Both Hensley and Greig would prefer more senior involvement . “We’re gonna offer writing sessions so everyone is involved with the entire show,” Hensley said, in order for the participants to be on the same page.  Since the Variety Show is the “biggest fundraiser,” for senior prom, “our main objective is to get as many seniors involved as possible.”

The Variety Show is not only a source of entertainment , it’s a tradition. As Greig explains, “it’s a good time for them to become united before they go.”