As the 2024-2025 school year began earlier this fall, the Community Council has brought many fun and exciting activities for the Hackley community to enjoy the back-to-school season. Including the creation of new traditions, the Council has planned both grade-specific activities and competitions that involve all Upper School students.
“Our purpose is to unite the community, everything we do revolves around that,” said Meredith Lee, Senior Class President.
For the past month, Council has been working to incorporate activities that involve bringing people from different grades together. Leading up to the Fall Sting, Council invited the Upper School community, including both students and faculty, to dress up in various themes that ranged from “Funny T-Shirt Day” to “Clash Day” during Spirit Week. Then, on the day of Sting, Council hosted a series of competitions between the Upper School grades to get the Hilltop excited about the Sting. This stirred up more school spirit and pride from students.
“I think they were a fun and good way to promote school spirit. It was a fun way of working with the grade,” said freshman council member Pia Severin.
“The March to The Arch” was another successful Community Council event. Upper School students staged a pep rally and ran up Alumni Drive together. This event held right before the night football game at the Sting, excited the crowd and brought lively energy to the stands.
In addition to these Upper School-wide activities, each grade-specific Council has been planning more activities to create bonding experiences for their grade. While these plans are still in the works for underclassmen Councils, Senior Council has already developed a series of activities for seniors to kickstart their senior year.
During the first week of school, seniors were invited to use kid backpacks that featured any sort of childhood movie or character they enjoyed growing up. From “My Little Pony” to “Care Bears” to “Peppa Pig,” the backpacks that filled the halls spanned a variety of characters, allowing seniors to reminisce over their childhood days as they approached their final year on the Hilltop.
Council also organized a senior car decorating activity. On First Monday, seniors were able to use colorful markers, provided by council, to decorate their cars with designs and sayings. From students’ initials, to stars and hearts, as well as “Seniors” written colorfully, various drawings were used to signal the start of their senior year.
“It was so much fun expressing the pride of being a Hackley senior and being able to decorate your friends’ cars with each other,” said Meredith.
Last week, seniors were invited to Senior Sunrise, an opportunity for the class of 2025 to gather and watch the sunrise together on Pickert Field with breakfast provided by the HPA. Senior Council had been focusing on these projects for the past month, and are now ready to pivot to Halloween plans.
“We are now entering a new phase. We will be focusing on Halloween, candy grams, and will decorate the Grille Room with Halloween decorations” said Meredith.