Adam Degenhardt

Baldwin High School serves the Baldwin, Whitehall, and Baldwin Township communities.

For some students, this weekend will be more than just the homecoming football game and dance.

Yom Kippur, one of the highest holidays in the Jewish calendar, takes place from sundown Friday through sundown on Saturday. That time period includes the homecoming football game on Friday night, and it ends about 15 minutes before the dance on Saturday. However, the celebration of Yom Kippur includes fasting all day, so it traditionally is followed by a feast. 

The football game and homecoming dance also occur during Dashain, one of the most important Nepali holidays. The holiday runs for several days, but on Saturday, extended family will gather together for a ceremony of blessings and good fortune.

This creates a conflict for Jewish and Nepali students at Baldwin High School.

“I have to choose between going to the dance or celebrating this holiday,” senior Amelia Landis said of Yom Kippur. “It’s important, but at the same time I want to go to the dance.”

Senior Alex Neuhaus said the issue is complicated.

“I understand how they could overlook that it’s Yom Kippur because we are a small percentage of the student body,” Neuhaus said. “At the same time, I believe that they should have been a little bit more aware of the conflict.”

Junior Arsita Khatiwada, who celebrates Dashain, said she and her friends were disappointed when the homecoming date was announced. 

She said that it is common for families to go out of state and meet up with extended family by Saturday, which will be the final day of the holiday. Despite having earlier made plans with friends to attend the dance, Khatiwada said that the family-oriented celebration was more important. 

“We already had plans for our dresses and what we were going to do after, but we can’t follow through with that now,” she said. 

The athletic office works with class sponsors to work out homecoming dates. Principal Shaun Tomaszewski acknowledged that the school had not been aware of the holiday timing conflict.

“I didn’t even think to check the dates,” Tomaszewski said. “I can with almost 100 percent certainty say that if folks were aware of that conflict, we wouldn’t choose to schedule on an important religious holiday.”

Scheduling school events is always difficult, he said. 

“Obviously we try to avoid conflict for all of our students and families, but when events and dates get changed, things can become very scrambled,” Tomaszewski said. “The athletics office looks at the home football games and tries to schedule things like youth night, military recognition, senior rec, and the homecoming football game.”

Homecoming was particularly challenging to schedule this year, Athletic Director Anthony Cherico said.

Because of the late start to this school year, there were two football games before classes started, which would not have worked for homecoming, he said. Class sponsors also indicated that a Sept. 20 football game would not have provided enough planning time for the carnival and dance, Cherico said.

The homecoming game and dance were originally scheduled for the first weekend of October, said history teacher Richard Deemer, who is helping to organize homecoming.

“We originally had homecoming scheduled for Oct. 4 and the dance on the fifth,” Deemer said. “The athletic office reached out to us at the end of July, notifying us that homecoming was moved to Oct. 11 and the dance on Oct. 12 due to a youth cheerleading event.”

Some student athletes from other fall sports are also affected by the homecoming schedule in any given year, Deemer said. This year that includes the girls volleyball team, which has a tournament on Saturday, making it difficult for the girls to get prepared with friends and have family photos before the dance.

Additionally, Baldwin is a diverse school, with students who celebrate many different religions, which further makes scheduling school events difficult, Tomaszewski and Deemer said.

“We do take religious holidays into consideration for all dances,” Deemer said. “Add sports and other activities, along with facilities availability, to the list, and it becomes very difficult to find a date that works for everyone.”

Still, the timing of this year’s homecoming has created a conflict for Jewish students like Landis.

“I think this would not be happening during any other holiday. So it’s not fair, especially because Yom Kippur is on everyone’s calendar,” Landis said. 

Khatiwada agreed.

“I wish they did more research because so much of the population of Baldwin is Hindu or Jewish,” Khatiwada said.

Tomaszewski wants to make sure that the school prioritizes these issues in the future.

“I know that we can definitely do better in looking at potential holiday conflicts when it comes to scheduling these big school events,” Tomaszewski said. “It’s definitely something that I’m going to do more intentionally and more actively moving forward.”

Landis explained how she plans to handle the scheduling conflicts.

“I am going to celebrate the holiday in the morning and fast the entire day,” Landis said. “But I am still planning on attending the game and the dance.”

Neuhaus has similar plans to balance this holiday and school event.

“I am attending both the dance and the game just because it is my senior year,” Neuhaus said. “I am also planning on fasting and watching a livestream of my temple after the dance.”

Khatiwada said that she wasn’t interested in attending the football game, but she would be missing the dance due to the scheduling conflict.

Josephine Wysocki and Anne Hampton contributed to this story.