Every year, our school runs 4 spirit weeks, taking place before Homecoming, Thanksgiving Break, Christmas Break, and Spring Break. Every day within the weeks have different themes, and it’s a lot of fun to see how creative people can get with themes such as “tourist” or “decades.” There’s usually 1 day each week to raise awareness for some current issue, like cancer or Black Lives Matter, and Friday is always for our school colors: green and white. They’re very fun to take part in and to see other people's ideas.
If there’s one thing that’s a staple of most American high schools, it’s pep rallies, and that’s no different here. We hold rallies right at the end of our spirit weeks, usually with the theme of the day being Oakmont colors. We try to make our rallies as interactive as possible, including games, raffles, and cheering contests. They’re a great way to end or start a season off, and they get everyone all pepped up, hence why they’re called pep rallies.
Every month, the council votes on 1 member and 1 teacher that have basically been the MVP of that month. This could be for being extra involved with events, helping out a lot around the school, etc. After the votes, the winners are revealed, and each winner gets something different. The StuCo of the month winner gets a stuffed animal (different each year, this time it was Remy the rat from Ratatouille) for the month, which they have to decorate with 1 new clothing item, and the teacher gets a certificate, an apple, and a picture with the entire council. It’s great to see members and teachers that don’t always get the recognition they deserve.
Even outside of school, we still had events to run. Some of these events were the car washes, 1 being held in Ashburnham, and the in Westminster (the 2 towns Oakmont is associated with). We hold the car washes as a fundraiser to pay for last year’s senior scholarships, which are decided on in a way similar to the StuCo and Teacher of the Month. They’re a great way of getting in touch with each other over the summer while also raising money for the scholarships.
The town of Ashburnham holds an annual event which is basically a fair; there are personal stands selling things, games for the kids, etc. We normally have our own tent at the Community Day, selling popcorn and cotton candy. This is also a fundraiser for the senior scholarships. I had been going to the Ashburnham Community Day for years, but the experience I had with StuCo was very different. That might also have to do with the fact that there was a station for bubble soccer (soccer but with a big ball and everyone’s in plastic bubbles), so we did a couple rounds of that. It’s great to see StuCo taking part in community events, and it’s interesting to see what’s different from that perspective.
On the last day of summer, we hold a Block Party for anyone who will be going to Oakmont that year. We set up yard games like cornhole, snacks, and places to just hang out. It’s supposed to make the transition into school a little less boring, and I think it works.
When we have the soon-to-be freshmen come to the school for a tour and orientation, we put on a performance that really shines a light on one of StuCo’s primary goals; getting out of your comfort zone. In order to show the freshmen what violates dress code, we hold a fashion show, where we dress up in ways that aren’t school appropriate (but still appropriate in general). Usually, Dufour has the minimal amount of guys on the council show off the short shorts and crop tops, and last year I had to do both. It was one of the best and most traumatizing experiences of my life, and I sort of hope that I’ll be able to do it again.
To celebrate the start of the football season, we, like most other high schools, hold a Homecoming dance. Each year the dance had a different theme, and this year’s was the Roarin’ 20s, because the senior class at the time was the class of 2020. It took a lot of time and effort to set it up, but it was all worth it when we got to experience it later that night. Homecoming is our biggest event of the year, and each time we make sure to show that.
The Homecoming dance is held on the Saturday after the first football game, but before that we also hold a smaller event in the form of a tailgate. It’s exactly what you’d think: a bunch of people hang out in the backs of pickups waiting for the game to start. It’s great to just hang out with your friends in a setting that isn’t school or the noise of the game. I hope that some of these events will only be postponed, and I wonder if we’ll actually be able to do some of these events under the strict limitations of the pandemic. All I can do at this point is hope.
Relay for Life the only charity that we don’t fundraise for as a council. We still attend it, but people only donate what they get from their own personal attempts. The event itself is great to be at, with not only the run but also all of the games that other groups have set up. It’s a great way to participate in charity events.
On a Saturday right around Halloween, we set up our school like a haunted house, dim the lights, and even act as parts of the experience. Tour guides take people all throughout the school, and it’s a lot of fun to scare a lot of your classmates and make fun of them the following Monday.
Everyone is given 1 of 3 bingo boards. In the central hub of Oakmont (4 Corners), the numbers are called out, and as soon as there’s a bingo, everyone with that card has to run to 4 Corners gobbling like a turkey, where they can grab a prize bag, most of which contain candy, but some have crazy prizes. One even had a portable Atari with a few games built in. It’s pretty crazy seeing ⅓ of a school of roughly 1,000 students making a mad dash to the prize tables while the halls echo with bad turkey imitations.
One day close to winter break, we set up our school’s lecture hall for a Christmas party for all of the AWRSD’s staff’s kids. It’s a nice little break for us to go from Homecoming, Haunted High, and Turkey Bingo, to just watching kids for an hour before they bring out Santa. Just like every Christmas party, Santa has gifts ready for all of the kids supplied by their parents. The end of that means it’s the end of the party; all of the staff leaves and we clean up the lecture hall.
Clause for a Cause is another fundraiser that we hold, and this time it’s about candy canes. We’re not allowed to sell them, so we’re asking for $0.50 donations and giving them out as a thank you, We’re usually given 2 boxes (12 packs) of normal candy canes and 3 boxes of fruity ones, and we’re expected to sell all of them within 2 weeks. The fruity candy canes go within the first few days, but oftentimes you’re left with 2 or 3 regular ones that no one asks for. Sometimes we just donate to our own bucket just to clear it out. It’s very successful, but sometimes you don’t want to carry around a bucket with 4 candy canes and 56 candy canes worth of cash for a few days.
Since my grandparents are high-ranking members of the Ashburnham Lion’s Club and Dufour’s their son, we help out in one of their events; the Pancake Breakfast. It’s a Christmas breakfast they hold to fund their mission, and we help serve the food. The only time something crazy over the top happened was when Santa cancelled, so Dufour had to be Santa for the rest of the breakfast.
Leading up to Valentine’s Day, we’re selling carnations at lunch. People would come up, write down who they are, who the carnation(s) are going to, and how many carnations are being sent. After school on February 13th, we meet up to get all of the carnations organized, which we distribute the next morning to the corresponding homerooms. While we’re getting that done, we’re also writing everyone’s name in the entire school on paper hearts and are sticking them on the support beams in 4 Corners. This is for people to find their names and do whatever they want with them.
Harmony Week is similar to a Spirit Week, but all of the themes are around ideas like equality, compassion, etc. We make posters about spreading positivity and stuff like that, and each day it is encouraged for everyone to do something good relating to the theme of that day. It’s a well spirited week, and it helps bring the school closer together.
Once or twice a year, we used to hold Wii “Tourneys,” where you’d have the option of playing 3 NintendoWii games. We’ve recently adopted the Switch as a part of the Tourneys, and the games are almost always Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros, and either Wii Sports Resort or Just Dance. They’re nice events to have a quick run through, without any stress on decorations being set up or orders coming in on time.
The Dodgeball Tournament is actually a big event at our school. We spend weeks holding sign-ups and organizing teams into a double-elimination bracket. At the event, we have referees (Dufour being one of them got smacked by a ball), an announcer, and concessions. It’s a lot of fun, but most of the time I was stuck in concessions because I was the only one who knew how to use the pizza oven, and the only reason I knew how was because of the 2 times I helped with concessions at basketball games with the Indoor Track team. Other than that, it’s a great experience.
Powderpuff is an event for junior and senior girls to play football against each other. They spend months preparing and practicing with members of the football team as their coaches. It would’ve been fairly similar to a normal football game, but since they hold it in the spring the only time I got to be there was as a freshman, and freshmen are always on chain crew (the people who keep track of position and downs).
At the end of the year, we hold an event where all juniors and seniors who choose to participate take part in a relay race. Each member of each class has to run 1 full-ish lap around the football field, and if one class has more racers, the other must have people going multiple times. Usually, the seniors obviously win, but if there’s a junior class full of track runners, it gives them a slight advantage. Spectating that is very entertaining, and afterwards there are 2 tug-of-wars that take place between the juniors and seniors, and the freshmen and sophomores.
In order to determine who will be the next EBoard (president, VP, secretary, treasurer, historian, and PR), applications are sent in for the seniors to look over and decide. I personally disagree with the way that this is done, because while the seniors are most experienced with the council and Oakmont in general, there could be a batch of seniors that just don’t care about who gets what. I think that all current members that aren’t running should decide, but I don’t make the rules. It’s a fine system and it works, it could just backfire any year. I actually sent in an application for VP, but since I got accepted into Mass Academy I couldn’t continue.
In order to appreciate all of the faculty, the morning of the last day of school is spent in the kitchen making breakfast for them. Everything went smoothly until something in the gym activated the fire alarm. That wasn’t the best experience, since there were 30 students in the kitchen, a place that has multiple ways of starting a fire on accident or on purpose, when it was pulled, and when we walked out everyone stared at us. Luckily a balloon or something triggered it, and we went back to business as normal. After that whole ordeal we successfully delivered edible food to all of the faculty. That was time for our end of the school year meeting, where we discuss possible changes to the StuCo Constitution and just ideas in general for next year. It should be just a nice, relaxing way of ending the school year, but it ended up being one of the craziest at Oakmont that year.
As I mentioned on the previous page, MASC holds a state-wide conference every year around the beginning of March in Hyannis. This is a 3 day event, held solely in a hotel for the sake of keeping everyone together. Every MASC conference has a theme, relating in some way to leadership, and this year’s theme was MASCer Chef, and how throughout the conference we had to “gather our ingredients” and mix them together to create our definition of leadership. Our council’s president embraced this theme and got a chef hand puppet.
The Polar Plunge event is a fundraiser for Special Olympics, and the idea is that your council comes up with a theme (ours was Arctic and Antarctic this year), dresses up in that theme, and then sprints into the early March ocean water. It might sound crazy, and that’s because it is. Even though the water was freezing cold, I still went completely under. It’s really fun walking around the beach seeing other councils’ themes and costumes and seeing their reactions to yours (I’m the iceberg on the left of the picture). In my freshman year, our theme was old people and that along with our costumes won us the award for the best theme that year.
Every Student Council conference has at least a couple workshops. Those are activities that you can do that help enhance your leadership skills which are mostly run by fellow students. They can be about a variety of topics and have a variety of themes. Everyone usually has 4 workshops at MASC.
MASC always gets 2 guest speakers to come each year. The speakers will often talk about important life lessons that oftentimes come with a very sad story. There are times where the mood of the presentation is always upbeat, but it’s rare.
It’s exactly what it sounds like. We choose a mash-up of songs relating to a theme and lip sync and dance to them. We went with boy bands this year, and as you can see it wasn’t clarified what time period or genre to go with. We didn’t win, but it was still a lot of fun.
Like with our school, elections are held to determine the next year’s MASC EBoard. We had a candidate run for VP, but she didn’t get it. Fortunately, she got enough votes to get her a spot on the EBoard as a delegate, which is better than nothing. If I didn’t get into Mass Academy, I would’ve considered running for MASC president this year, but now I won’t have to go through the stress of talking to thousands of people on a stage.
On the last night of the conference, a banquette is held. This is where the winners of the election, polar plunge costume competition, and lip sync battle are announced, along with some other miscellaneous awards. This year, Dufour got Advisor of the Year, and one of our members got the Unsung Hero Award, which is given to someone who does a lot of work for their council but never receives nor asks for attention for it. The banquette is a great culmination of the entire conference, and it’s the following morning where we say goodbye to friends from different councils, both old friends who we reunited with 2 days prior and new friends we made during our time at the conference.
Within MASC, there are 4 districts: the West (WMASC), North East (NEMASC), South East (SEMASC), and Central Districts (CDMASC). Oakmont is a part of CDMASC, and hence also participates in the 2 CDMASC conferences held each year, 1 in the fall, the other in the spring. These conferences aren’t nearly as long as MASC, with each only being an afternoon, but they still accomplish similar things.
Like with MASC, CDMASC has workshops for us to do, but there are a few differences. Due to there being less time, you only go to 2 workshops per conference. There also aren’t any workshops held by advisors or guest speakers, and you get to choose which workshop you go to. Neither of these statements can be said for MASC.
We also get a guest speaker at CDMASC, but because of time we only get one. The subjects of the speakers’ presentations don’t change between state and district level events, so it’s the same thing with only 1 speaker.
As with the workshops and guest speaker, the CDMASC EBoard elections run very similarly to how it works in MASC. District conferences like CDMASC are basically training for the big event of MASC.