For the first year at Lincoln since the school opened, we are having a spring dance. ASB is planning to call it Spring Fling but I believe it should be called Tolo.
Tolo, also referred to as Sadie Hawkins, is a dance where the girls ask the guys out as opposed to the stereotype of the guys asking the girls, but it’s much deeper than breaking a stereotype to the Pacific Northwest.
In 1909, nine women attending the University of Washington (UW) realized that the school had two honor societies for men and zero for women. They decided to start one for themselves, to help promote women empowerment and to raise money for future women to get scholarships.
These women choose to name their honors society The Tolo Club which in the Chinook Jargon language of the local Chinook tribe means ‘to earn’ or ‘to win’. To raise money for their club, they decided to advertise a dance called Tolo named after their club. Their idea for the dance was to have the women ask the man to raise money for scholarships, and to celebrate women’s achievements.
The girls received a lot of backlash from the student body, and many students believed it would be inappropriate for the women to ask the men to the dance. Others believed it would break social structures and would cause a spike in liberal relationships, which could be seen as scandalous.
To raise this money, they charged an entry fee of $1, and they were able to raise a total of $300. Today, that would have been a profit of about $9,100. The event was a massive success and the Tolo club is still alive at the UW. This tradition has spread throughout high schools and colleges in the Pacific Northwest for their winter and spring dances.
Our dance should be called Tolo instead of Spring Fling because of the historical impact that it has had on many Seattle students. Many schools in the Seattle area also have Tolo, and students from those schools have said they enjoy having one, not just for the historical aspect.
Students from Seattle Prep and Ingraham shared that they enjoy having a Tolo. Addison Clark (’27) from Ingraham explains how she enjoys it because her and her friends “all meet up and make the signs together. It’s fun to find a cool idea and then make them for our dates.”
Iris Wilson (’27) from Seattle Prep shares that she enjoys Tolo, “because it’s different than Hoco and it’s fun to ask the guys.” Wilson continued, saying that she enjoys it because her friends all make signs together, much like Clark. Wilson also shares their guy friends ask them to Homecoming, so they ask them to Tolo.
When talking to Lincoln’s ASB president Levi Hanscom (’25) about the possibility of calling our dance Tolo instead of Spring Fling he responded saying, “the only problem with wanting to do Tolo is we could receive backlash from students” but Hanscom didn’t know Washington’s history behind Tolo. After explaining the meaning behind Tolo, he thought it was a great idea and thought it could be a possibility for our spring dance.
If we share the history of Tolo, people will understand that its real meaning is to help young women gain more confidence. Its history is important to female students in the Pacific Northwest, so calling our spring dance Tolo will help promote women empowerment at Lincoln and will help teach student the history behind it.
