Like so many of her peers, Addy Hildebrand saw the most cherished parts of her senior year slip away when covid-19 shuttered her high school and others exactly four years ago.

Hildebrand, 22, of Derry, now a Robert Morris University senior, made her very first trip to a prom store in 2020.

“I got a big old princess dress,” she said. “And I never got to wear it.”

Though she has since given away that sparkly lilac purple garment, Hildebrand and the rest of Robert Morris’ Class of 2024 finally will get their chance to dress up and hit the dance floor.

That’s because their university is organizing a “prom” for graduating seniors and is opening the free April 20 event to the entire campus. It will be held in the 4,000-seat UPMC Events Center, where the basketball hardwood will be taken up and replaced by a dance floor and colorful prom decorations.

University officials said it’s the right thing to do.

“The class of 2024 is a unique group. They’ve really had some challenges, but they’ve also shown real resilience,” said John Locke, who as RMU’s chief experience officer is overseeing the event.

“We want to make their senior year as memorable as it can possibly be,” he said. “We’re trying to provide them with – maybe – the night that never was.”

Everyone knows the stories of school life turned upside down by the covid pandemic. School sports and club outings ceased, classrooms went dark and students couldn’t congregate with friends, even away from school.

Graduation ceremonies gave way to staged drive-bys to keep those in their cars safe from the virus as they marked the end of the high school years.

“All my classes were remote. I wasn’t allowed out of the house. I couldn’t see any of my friends,” said Mia Laurenzi, 22, of Robinson, a senior marketing major at RMU and a graduate of Montour High School.

At first, Gov. Tom Wolf’’s March 13, 2020, announcement that Pennsylvania schools would close for 10 business days seemed to some like a vacation.

“No one thought the rest of the year would be canceled,” said Cade Skuse, 21, from Freedom, Pa., now a senior actuarial science major at Robert Morris.

What’s been dubbed “RMU Prom 2024” will run from 9 p.m. to midnight. Admission is free for students, who can each bring a guest. Parents and family may participate in a Grand March beforehand, while students walk in groups, pairs, trios, or individually.

Professional photographers will be on hand to capture the memories.

To help spread the word on campus, the university invited several seniors into a studio to share their pandemic recollections from high school with a video camera running. Some are helping plan the prom.

Covid masks were intentionally left on chairs to illicit reactions from the students as they arrived at the studio.

“I had like five of them,” said Hildebrand, a public relations and advertising major with a minor in theater. “I had to have one to match whatever I was wearing.”

Picking up the mask left on her seat, Megan Betz , 21, a senior marketing major from Ligonier, let out a laugh, saying, “These sucked so bad.”

Spring 2020 was devastating, she said. “The worst part was missing those end-of-year things.”

Laurenzi recalled how, as a high school senior, she bought her dress well in advance and was devastated she’d never wear it.

Some high school seniors, who were denied a dance, opted to be photographed all dressed up somewhere outside.

Not Laurenzi.

“I didn’t take any pictures in my dress. I ended up selling it just to get it out of my closet,” she said. “I didn’t want to put it on because I was so upset.”

But four years later, she is eagerly planning what she will wear to the RMU Prom and will take a close male friend from campus as her date. Looking back, she said, the disappointment she worked through “has helped me grow as a person.”

But her reverence for the prom has not diminished.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event,” she said.

Ryan Graham, 22, a senior cybersecurity major from Jefferson Hills and Hildebrand’s prom date, said it will feel good “to take back some of the senior year experience that kind of got robbed from us.”

Laurenzi said “having a redo is going to be really special, not only to me but to the entire Class of 2024.”

Student planners and employees are finalizing decisions about music, food and nonalcoholic refreshments. There will be a reception beforehand for seniors of legal drinking age.

The prom comes three weeks before the private suburban university of approximately 3,400 students in Moon holds commencement the weekend of May 10-11.

Locke said RMU officials believe there will be a strong turnout for prom since the Class of 2024 has shown a penchant to show up in large numbers for in-person events. As for the prom guests, Locke believes the majority will be Robert Morris students, but “I like the idea of some of them bringing a high school date they never got to bring.

“We’ll see if that happens.”

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