Behind the Scenes of a Rally

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Julia Wong

Kyle Lopez (12) and Adam Lawson (10) create the spirit day poster for Twin Day on Jan. 20. ASB members spend time painting the backdrop for each spirit day for students to use when taking photos.

The Associated Student Body (ASB) spends several months each year planning the five rallies that take place in the gym, generally at the end of each spirit week excluding the senior send-off rally. ASB can start planning for a normal rally one or two months in advance, according to senior Francesca Dizon, ASB’s Secretary of Spirit.

“We’re mainly tasked with decorating for dances, rallies and getting posters done on time,” Dizon said.

In order to organize the rallies, ASB meets every Monday and spends time outside of school painting, ordering decorations and gathering props for games.

All three secretaries of spirit handle different parts of the rally. For example, sophomore Julia Khinno—another Secretary of Spirit—paints the rally posters, helps plan games and gathers supplies.

Although ensuring that having all necessary supplies is part of planning, communication also plays a major role.

“So there’s really good communication because we have to get everything done by deadlines,” Dizon said. “And if we don’t do all that communication, there’s just no rally.”

While ASB leaders do most of the planning, ASB adviser Nicole Sebek also helps with planning rallies and meeting deadlines.

“If [Ms. Sebek] needs something, she won’t beat around the bush,” Dizon said. “She’ll tell you what she needs, and if you didn’t meet a deadline then she’ll do her best to work around it or push it back so that we’re not trying to give a half-hearted rally.”

Despite the amount of planning that goes on before the rally, games might not go as planned, and ASB might have to improvise.

“[For the candy toss], we hand [class representatives] buckets and it’s kind of hard because we don’t know how much candy to order and how big their hands are,” Khinno said. “So it’s all a big gamble.”

For example, the members of ASB have no way to know how people will react to certain aspects of the rally, like the music being played. They might have back-up options if something does not go according to plan.

“[For the music we will] kind of try to experiment with how the crowd’s feeling,” Dizon said. “Like with the homecoming rally, we switched over to the music production club, which people really liked. They had a good time doing it, and we had a good time having them there because they’re students also, so they kind of know what’s happening, and the new music today.”

In the second to last rally of the year, ASB organizes a dance-off rally, where each grade level works with their representative to choreograph a dance to a certain theme, which they then perform in front of several judges, usually teachers, and the whole school.