The crisp smell of grilling burgers, the crackles and pops of crinkly bacon, and the pop of soda cans spread through campus on June 8, 2023. For many other freshmen, sophomores and juniors, it was a stressful day, finishing out their final finals before being released for summer break or attending graduation later that day. But for a group in APUSH teacher Faith Daly’s 6th-period class, the final was a culmination of a food challenge that had continually escalated.

For the last several months, a group of students in the class had slowly begun bringing in food to consume during class. Due to Ms. Daly’s generous policy on eating in class and the fact that the class was directly after lunch, students would often go off-campus and buy food that they would eat during class. This phenomenon significantly ramped up after the AP exams in May.

“After AP’s [AP tests] all we did during class was watch movies,” Kali Duvvuri said. “So during lunch, my friends and I would get food because we were so bored during class that the best thing to do was to eat.”

One table group, composed of Kali, Kabeer Minocha, Shrey Jain, Yul Hong, Jeremy Krainin, Samik Pattanayak and Tristan Hoang, ended up making it a competition to bring even more extravagant meals each day. It began with going to Safeway during lunch and buying extra large bags of chips and sometimes drinks. On one student’s birthday, Kali ended up buying two large chocolate cakes to have a birthday party during class. As finals week loomed, the group started running out of ideas and had brainstorming sessions to decide what they would bring to the next class.

“One day [senior Yul Hong] brought McDonalds for all of us and he brought a few cookies,” Kali said. “I liked them so much that I went to McDonalds next class and bought two 24-packs of cookies for the class.”

But for the very last class of the semester, the group knew they had to go big.

So that day, at approximately noon., room 603 was flooded with an electric stove, 15 packs of burgers, over 40 hot dogs, and an abundance of burgers and hot dog buns. And of course, they had some mustard with that.

As soon as the period started, the group made their way into the hallway between the history wing and the student center to set up a main base of operations. This is where senior Kabeer manned the grill.

For the next two hours, dozens of students walked by to be greeted with the intense smell of barbeque. Many passers were even offered burgers and hot dogs as a token of their affection. Interspersed between the feast, the group entered the student center to play foosball and air hockey.

“I mean, it was probably the most fun class I’ve ever had,” Kali said. “We were just messing around the entire time and a great end to junior year.”