Although the activities office announced the results of the senior class’ vote for homecoming queen candidates at 3 p.m. yesterday, Sept. 27, they left one girl off the list of nominees.
A mistake in tallying the votes resulted in senior Christina Young being left off the list, David Bones, assistant principal in charge of activities, said.
“What happened was in the haste to get things done – we really like to process the ballots in time to be able to announce that day – we missed a girl,” Bones said. “We double checked, triple checked and quadruple checked. We absolutely had to make sure we included everyone.”
While the nine girls originally named here celebrated their nomination, Young said she was in tears when she realized she wasn’t going to be a part of the court.
“I started crying. Everyone was like, ‘I thought you were going to be one of them. Everyone voted for you,’ and I was really shocked,” Young said. “I really wanted it. I’ve wanted it since sophomore year, and the fact that I didn’t get it, I was just really embarrassed.”
Young learned of the omission Friday afternoon when Bones told her. Now the court, which includes the girls and their escorts, will expand to a total of 20 students, something that rarely happens since usually the only time there are more than nine candidates is when there is a tie for spots nine and 10. This time is different, though, Bones said.
Although the machine counts the number of votes for each girl, it does not calculate the top nine. Instead, Bones goes through 250 numbers and matches the top nine numbers with their respective names by hand, Bones said. Because it is time consuming, there is little time between getting the results and announcing them before school ends. Bones did not realize the mistake until a day later.
“Someone came in and asked about the results, and I said, ‘We don’t give the results, but I’d be happy to double check.’ And upon double checking we discovered an error,” Bones said. “In this case what happened was a girl was left off the list when we looked and saw the numbers and missed one of the numbers and left one of the girls off … but we were able to add them on.  Fortunately, it was caught in time to be able to participate fully in homecoming. So I’m a little excited about that.”
While Young is ecstatic to be a part of the court, she feels a little neglected and set off from the other candidates, who had their names announced over the intercom.
“I just feel like they could have counted the votes right,” Young said. “I’m p—ed off about them” not announcing her name over the intercom. “I’m going to ask them to do that on Monday like they did with all the other girls. I thought they were going to do that today, but I don’t know why [they didn’t].”
By Daphne Yu
With additional reporting by Maria Kalaitzandonakes and Laurel Critchfield