DECA hosts fashion show for Make-A-Wish

Serena Bettis • March 27, 2017

Photo Credit: Rena Machani

DECA students at Fossil Ridge High School put on their eleventh annual Prom Fashion Show to benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation on Thursday, March 23. This year’s show was in support of Rebekah, a fifteen-year-old whose dream is to travel to New York City to be on Broadway. Rebekah has cystic fibrosis, which is a lifelong disease that affects the cells that produce mucus and sweat. It causes fluids in the body to block tubes and passageways, and makes breathing difficult. Rebekah was originally going to speak at the event, but she was too sick to make it.

Featuring over 80 students from high schools in the Poudre School District and countless others working behind the scenes, this fashion show allows students to check out and model the latest dress styles before prom season, while supporting their friends and giving back to the community. “As a whole, I think it’s really amazing that we’re coming together as not only a school but a community, since there’s more than just people from Fossil and everyone from the community is rallying around this one girl to make sure she can have her wish granted,” said Miss Colorado’s Outstanding Teen and Fossil senior Mackenzie Matz, an emcee at the fashion show. The event is a hit every year, and even students who did not plan or participate in the event enjoyed it. Senior Noah Waters said, “It was really cool to see all my friends strut their stuff and just have a good time.”

Miss Colorado’s Outstanding Teen and Fossil senior Mackenzie Matz spoke at the event. Photo Credit: Rena Machani

Directors of the show consisted of a small group of DECA seniors who got to gain real-world business and leadership experience by learning how to coordinate the models for the show, find sponsors for the event, advertise, and other logistics that go into making sure the event runs smoothly. On top of this responsibility, the seniors in charge of the show receive little assistance from the DECA advisor, so this is truly a student-run project.

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Lindsey Swanson, a DECA senior, was in charge of organizing the models for the event. She had to be able to coordinate with models’ schedules so they were able to pick up and try on their dresses or tuxes for the show and attend the dress rehearsal and actual event. Swanson was also responsible for contacting the tux and dress sponsors. Swanson said, “The number one thing I learned is how difficult it is to manage a large number of people. I had to problem solve with them to figure out a way for them to be in the show, which was really hard.”

So far, DECA has raised a total of $5,600 for the foundation, though they still have donations coming in and are planning more fundraising activities before the school year is over. “One of the biggest things we do at Fossil is service learning,” said Brad Nye, an assistant principal at Fossil. Many students at Fossil have past experience working with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and junior Koryn Lee has even felt the impact of the organization directly. Lee, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor, was granted her wish to go to an elephant sanctuary in Thailand, which will be fulfilled this summer.

If students still wish to donate to the cause, they can contact a DECA member or the club sponsor, Tanya Alcarez.

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About the Contributor

Serena Bettis, Editor-in-Chief

Serena Bettis, senior, is entering into her third year on the Etched in Stone staff as this year’s Editor-in-Chief. A four year journalism student, she has high hopes for Etched in Stone this school year, and wants to be able to guide the staff in achieving their goals as much as possible. While Bettis has become a much more outspoken person than she was when she started at Fossil Ridge High School, she still finds discomfort speaking in front of large groups of people (“large” being defined anywhere from 6 to 30), but is more than ready to grow in that aspect of leadership over the course of the year. Most of her journalistic goals for the year are not personal, but rather involve the entire program. She aims to further improve upon the look of the Etched in Stone website, which she spent countless hours on her junior year, enough for it to win awards before she graduates.

Aside from Etched in Stone, Bettis takes part in the school marching, jazz, and concert bands as a flute player, volunteers with Key Club, and is the Historian for the National Honor Society. She has also held a part-time job at TCBY for over a year, and now knows more than she needs to about the sugar content in frozen yogurt. In her spare time, which is often hard to come by, Bettis can be found reading for fun, lamenting about how none of the new Young Adult romance novels she used to love so much are good anymore, working on making the perfect French macaron, or binge watching her recent addiction, Game of Thrones. Music is a large part of her life, and her favorite genre is difficult to describe because she listens to many different bands. Some of her favorites include twenty one pilots, All Time Low, and Halsey, more alternative bands such as Issues and SWMRS, pop artists including Carly Rae Jepsen (“she’s so much more than “Call Me Maybe””), and Little Mix, and various songs by Spanish singers.

She is more than ready for graduation, and aspires to be attending college in Chicago by this time next year. Bettis knows that she wants to double major in journalism and foreign languages, with a potential minor in music, though she is undecided on what specific occupation she wants after college. Her best advice to someone who does not know what they are interested in is to simply join different activities and see what happens from there. “Eventually, sometime during sophomore year, journalism became the only class I wanted to go to, and even now I love it more than I used to love band, so that’s when it hit me that this was what I wanted to be involved in for most of my life,” she said. Another somewhat undecided goal of hers is to join the Peace Corps either during or after college, and she hopes that an experience in a different country with complete strangers might help her figure out what exactly she wants to do with her life.