Number of rallies cut to 3 in the year

Decked out in red, blue, white and green, hundreds of students jumped up and down on the bleachers, cheering for their respective classes. Streamers lined the gym and balloons floated in the air while music blasted from the speakers — the atmosphere was buzzing with energy. 

In the center of the gym, students knocked each down with hamster balls and licked Nutella off plastic wrap to try to win games for their class. Rally Fridays like the one on Sept. 20 are always major events throughout the year where students can rep school and class pride. 

But, this year, there will only be three rallies instead of four as in recent years. These rallies will come before school dances, including the one before Homecoming this past week, one before Winter Formal in December and one in March before Spring Fling.

The reason: Rallies don’t count toward the school’s instructional minutes and the commission was trying to preserve the annual Lip Dub as a school event, according to senior head commissioner Risa Carter.

Senior Ashvin Maheshwar said he isn’t thrilled about the change, calling rallies “ one of the best parts of the year.” He added: “If I screwed up a test or something, and I would just go to the rally and have fun.”

Besides having to reduce the number of rallies in the year, the rally commission has also scrapped the traditional Powerball game, where teams of two try to score rubber balls into trash cans before they get their flags pulled.

“Unfortunately, we had to take away this game because it caused a lot of stress and fights to break out,” Carter said.

Nonetheless, the commissioners they are still working hard to prepare for rallies, making sure to make the most out of each one. For the Homecoming rally, they chose the theme of “The Office,” creating a promo video and costumes revolving around the popular show.

The commission also introduced new games like Skin the Snake to replace the Powerball game, playing a video with the game’s rules during the rally. A promotional video for the upcoming Homecoming football game, edited by senior Nakul Nagaraj, was also played during the rally.

The rally commission seemed to achieve its goal of a safer but still enjoyable rally. There were no issues this time with fighting or crossing too far into the middle of the gym. However, the rally did end much earlier than rallies in the past, and with the loss of the highly popular and competitive Powerball, some students felt it wasn’t what previous ones had been.

“The most recent rally could have been even better,” Maheshwar said. “Some of the games were a bit dull at times, but the football video was really great and there was a lot of hype.”