SCA emphasizes student participation for holiday challenges

Michaela Scott, Editor-in-chief|January 4, 2021

Sophomore Hailey Kalinowsky’s submission for the SCA Door Decorating Contest. Kalinowsky was the sole finalist for the holiday challenge because her door best reflected the cheery holiday spirit. Photo courtesy of Hailey Kalinowsky

This year the Student Council Association hosted numerous schoolwide contests, including the Holiday Door Decorating Challenge to help kickstart the joyous season. The door decorating event consisted of a contest between photos submitted by students of their festive front door or house entrance.

“The rules of the event were simple,” sophomore SCA member Austin Trinh said. “Starting from the beginning of the month of December until December 14, students interested were to take a picture of their decorated doors and submit them via a Google Form in Schoology. All submissions would then be compiled and one submission would be picked by the school faculty to be the ultimate winner.”

As a representative of SCA, Trinh was given the opportunity of creating the initial Google Form for the holiday door decorating contest. His tasks were to organize each Google Form and photo submitted regarding the challenge. In addition, he assembled the sequence of events the challenge would undergo and what the timeline of the contest would look like.

“My swift decision to volunteer and my organizational suggestions unofficially made me the director of the event,” said Trinh. “Offers like these have definitely come up in the past and they most certainly look intimidating, especially to a first-time SCA member like me, but the experience was rewarding in the sense that it gave me a humble feeling of responsibility, and it was interesting seeing things from an insider’s scope instead.”

Officially, SCA has only hosted the holiday themed challenges twice, however they hope to continue the tradition in the future. The idea to host events during the holidays initially began during the previous school year in the springtime for seniors only; according to the SCA, the events had excellent past success.

“We thought it would be nice to bring the whole student body together, instead of just seniors,” Trinh said. “We thought students would enjoy another holiday door decorating event, but with the winter holidays being the theme.”

Overall, the submissions were low, although a unanimous winner was decided by the staff and was awarded a $15 DoorDash gift card. The faculty voted through an online ballot and analyzed each submission to see which best reflected the festive spirit of the winter holiday season.

“I was so surprised that I had won, you have no idea,” said sophomore Hailey Kalinowsky. “It was a fun sibling bonding experience because my sister, Gianna Kalinowsky, and my brother, Sean Kalinowsky, helped out as well with all the decorating.”

Kalinowsky explained that she participated in the contest using only the decorations stored away from previous years. She expressed how this was more of a fun activity rather than a competitive one because she assumed there would be lots of competition within the other students’ submissions.

“I wasn’t that determined because I thought there would be much better ones out there,” said Kalinowsky. “But, the lights were my favorite because they really illuminated the door.”

Overall, the challenges were a success and a great way to kick off the holiday season for the student body. However, the SCA has reported that participation toward spirit events has been drastically low ever since distance learning has started.

“We have been deliberately working on our advertising to encourage more students, so every spirit submission brings a warm heart to SCA now that we are in some weird times!” Trinh said. “I just wanted to enforce that we need spirit more than ever during this school year!”