In movies, prom is often stereotyped as an exclusive party for upperclassmen, where dates are the norm and drinking is common. Urban has set out to break this stereotype, making the school’s prom culture more of an end-of-year school dance than an exclusive event. Urban held its 31st prom on May 10.

Faculty agree that a sober prom is the only prom they are willing to run. “It’s a safety thing,” said Skyler Silverman, dean of student activities and science teacher. “Prom is, or can be, or should be, this cool, special moment where we’re together in this one particular way. Please don’t make it anything else [by using substances].” 

After two years of hosting prom at The Pearl, Urban decided to hold the event at the San Francisco Design Center (SFDC) Galleria. This venue gave students the option to stay on the ground floor to dance, eat and play games or go up to the second floor overlooking the dance floor to get away grom the noise. “[The venue] felt a little large for Urban,” Kavi Greenwood ’26 said. “I thought the second-floor amenity level [of the SFDC Galleria] was cool.” 

To centralize students at the venue, Urban closed off the highest two floors. “We don’t want people to spread out,” Said Paul Tawadrous ’26, member of StuCo’s prom subcommittee. “We wanted to do our best to contain it as much as we could … and consciously chose to put minimal stuff on the second floor.”

Every year, Silverman and Charlotte Worsley, assistant head of student life,  and Student Council (StuCo) work to plan prom. This year, StuCo decided on Hollywood as the theme. “[Once] we choose the venue, we Pinterest board it out and we pick a theme,” said Rachel Rose ’26, who served on StuCo’s prom subcommittee. “We don’t want people to feel like they need to dress [to] the theme, … [but] it makes planning decorations a million times easier and more cohesive.” 

Originally, StuCo planned to make the Hollywood theme bolder and more apparent by renting a chandelier, but they ultimately decided to use the budget money for additional activities. “The chandelier would have really brought [the theme] together,” Tawadrous said. “[But] if there [had been] a vote that went out that said, ‘Would you want games or a chandelier?,’ people [probably] would have said games.”

As a result, some students found that the thematic elements of the decor were more subtle. “I didn’t notice the theme at all. Except for maybe the photo booth with the red carpet,” Hayden Hu ’28 said. 

This year, StuCo brought games to prom. “The inclusion of games like air hockey and foosball [worked] to ensure everyone felt included and had fun, regardless of their interest in dancing,” Rose said. 

Although it was the first year that games were added to the prom, the stations were crowded all night. “I hung out with friends, not all [of whom were in] my grade, … and played foosball for two hours on this massive foosball table,” Greenwood said. “[We] didn’t have a care in the world except … a stupid game of foosball.” 

Some activities allowed for more natural cross-grade interactions. “[Foosball] was fun [because it allowed us] to connect across different grades in a way that prom normally doesn’t encourage,” Greenwood said.

Urban prom is open to all grades. “[When] I was dancing, … I saw mostly friend [groups] together,” Hu said. “But grades were pretty close together; it wasn’t totally separated, but also not [fully] combined.” 

This year’s prom was unique from previous years in that students stayed at the venue longer. “In years past, it’s kind of been the cool thing to [leave] early,” Griffin Hayward ’25 said. “I thought that this year, especially with its emphasis on sobriety, people would just kind of go for the doors early. But that was not the case.”