Like many of our readers, I went to Homecoming early this October. It was my first time attending a school dance since elementary school, since I avoided such things like the actual plague they were during middle school. Perhaps it was this gap in knowledge that made this go-around such a strange experience, but I posit that there is a deeper issue. And that issue is the space in which the mosh pit was held.

For those of you who abstained from Homecoming, allow me to set the scene. The cafeteria had been converted into a mingling space, brightly lit and decked in a layer of conversation. The doors of the gym lay open and beckoning as light spills in and sounds spills out. Within the gym itself, however, it was…strange.

Perhaps a fourth of the gym was occupied by a cube of bodies crushed up against what I believe was the DJ, although I never got close enough to verify. The rest of the gym was practically empty, with scattered groups populating the edges of the human cube and people lounging on the sparse seating. 

The strange lighting choices, taking chiefly the form of strangely mild shadows with a single inexplicable light illuminating an empty corner, added to the atmosphere of vague discontent—people were having fun, yes, but it seemed like they had to do a strange amount of work to create the desired experience. If you’re going to have a mosh pit, why not take steps to ensure that the atmosphere around it will fit that of a mosh pit? For it to have the proper vibes, as it t’were, you had to shove right up into the human cube. If you weren’t willing to utilize your elbows, you were forced to linger like a strange wallflower on the edges of the cube, a vast sea of disconcertingly empty space at your back.

Personally, I found lingering like a strange wallflower completely fine. Due to my choices in footwear, if I’d stepped on someone’s foot they might’ve actually died. Joining the mosh was simply never an option, even if the vibes outside of it were decidedly strange. That doesn’t mean, however, that steps cannot be taken in the future to minimize the weirdness of being outside of the mosh and make being encapsulated within the mosh less of a trial.

I propose that either the mosh pit should be held within a smaller space, more people must be willing to partake in the mosh pit, or the dance should just be held outside.

Since convincing more people to mosh would be strange and cause new problems, we can discard that as a possible solution. That leaves us with two remaining solutions: holding the mosh in a smaller space, or having the mosh outside.

The main benefit of having the mosh pit in a different, smaller room is that it would reduce the amount of non-mosh space, which is idiotically plentiful in the current arrangements. This way there would still be space for those who don’t want to mosh but still want to dance, it just wouldn’t be the majority of the space. The hurdle in implementing this solution is locating a suitably sized space within the school, which leads to the second proposal: having the mosh pit outside.

If the mosh pit were outside, the human cube would no longer be stark against empty space and instead would blend into the ample background of nature. However, this also creates new problems, the main being that Homecoming has been held outside in the past and people had…mixed opinions. Very, very mixed opinions. There are also the technical issues with such an event, like bathrooms, weather, and the cleanup afterwards.

Either way, the Homecoming mosh pit should be held in a different space, because the current situation is sustainable, yet inadequate.