Homecoming themes were announced on Aug. 21 at Movie Night, and senior Homecoming decorations began the very next day. Twenty seniors crowded into senior Marcus Emery’s home, conversing about how to make the most of their allocated space: two hallways and the quad steps.
With this year’s iconic “Star Wars” Homecoming theme, there was no doubt the decorations had to be unforgettable. That’s when senior Kabir Manghnani, well-known engineering whiz, came in as a Homecoming novice eager to join the preparations.
Manghnani is known around campus as the president of the M-SET robotics team with a knack for all things technical. This year, he decided to put his expertise to use by helping build the senior Homecoming decorations.
“I was kind of all over the place,” Manghnani said. “I worked on the general plan for Homecoming [decorations and] cutting parts for the arch.”
In many previous years, the centerpiece, or senior archway, was likely more guesswork than science, Manghnani said. In hopes of building a more stable structure, he designed this year’s senior archway using a Computer Aided Design (CAD) on his laptop.
Manghnani’s CAD simulates the building of the archway on his computer, where he can easily refine the model. The CAD also tells him the angles, heights, widths and other measurements needed to create the real-life structure.
“We still [have] to [finish building] it, but all the angles [are] planned out,” Manghnani said.
While Manghnani used his engineering expertise, he learned about the visual side of Homecoming decorations.
“In robotics, you don’t worry about how easy something will be to paint. You kind of just do it, and it works,” he said. “If you need to make it look good, you figure that out later. But a lot of [Homecoming decorations] is color-based.”
As a result, Manghnani and his team relied heavily on Spanish teacher and class adviser Arnaldo Rodriguex’s expertise from decades of experience with Homecoming decorations.
For instance, Rodriguex suggested that the centerpiece team add color, since the seniors will be taking their class photo for the yearbook there. Additionally, he told Manghnani and the rest of the centerpiece team to add the posters that hang off of it.
“He knows what he’s talking about, and he knows what looks good,” Manghnani said.
Manghnani and seniors Jonathan Hess, Brian Menard, Michael Fukuda, Miles Chaffin and Darby Williams worked together to build the centerpiece. Manghnani said he treasured the late nights and effort they placed into the project.
“There [was] an amazing vibrancy to the core team building the major elements — synergy is the best way I can describe it,” Manghnani said. “We constantly [tossed] jokes around, [struggled] to find things as it got darker and darker [and made] fun of each other's ‘incompetence.’ We've got a brilliant team and we've set out to be pretty damn good by comparison.”
