Prom '09: Meet the royal contenders

By Maritza Mestre
Published: Saturday, May 9, 2009 - 2:41am

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Last year's prom king and queen: Isaac Radnitzer and Eunice How. Gargoyle staff photo (click to enlarge)

The 2008 prince and princess: Russell Prochaska and Sheri Grill. Gargoyle staff photo (click to enlarge)

May 11 update: At Saturday's prom, there was a three-way tie for prince: juniors Langston Allston-Yeagle, Zack Goldberg, and Nathan Smith. Junior Tuli Bera was elected princess. Seniors Adam Tiouririne and Natsuki Nakamura were named king and queen.

URBANA — Early Friday morning the final ballot for prom court was announced. (For the complete list of candidates, see below.)

In previous years Uni has not had a preliminary round of voting for the court, normally having guests vote at prom itself.

This year's prom committee decided to try something new.

During junior and senior English classes Monday, students were asked to vote for their top three choices in the categories of senior king, senior queen, junior prince, and junior princess.

The votes were then counted, and the top three candidates in each category will appear on a final ballot tonight at the Champaign Country Club, where prom will be held from 8:30 to 11:45 p.m. This year's theme is A Night in Vegas.

"We wanted to try a new system out, and since we had a unique voting system at prom, we needed to adjust the ballot in some way," said junior class vice president Linda Ly.

The voting system Ly is referring to is a way of using poker chips as a voting element to fit in with the Vegas theme. Guests will drop a poker chip into a designated box for their preferred choice in order to indicate their voting preferences.

Ly also noted: "The new system lays out who is in the running for what, because in the past, people have voted out of tradition of a junior male for prince, junior female for princess, etc."

One complication prom committee faced this year was an error on the preliminary ballot sheets.

Junior Katie Buzard's name was not present on the princess ballot, so she will automatically appear on the final ballot in addition to the other three possible princesses.

As for whether this will become the standard way of doing things at subsequent proms, Ly said: "We are simply testing this new system out and will try to get as much feedback on it as possible, to determine how it'll be in the future."