STUCO Organizes Chanukah Color War
In the days leading up to Chanukah, students received a schedule of planned holiday festivities for each school day. While the original schedule outlined lots of fun celebrations, on the second night of Chanukah, the High School’s Student Council (STUCO) surprised the students with what they truly had in store for them.
On that second night of Chanukah, High School students and teachers drove down to Atlantic Station to ice skate. STUCO rented out the space, so students had the entire rink to themselves. While students skated or sipped their hot chocolate, Chanukah music streamed from the speakers. Sophomore Tova Bregman remarked, “I thought it was really nice being with the whole High School.” Junior Gavriella Bader similarly said, “It was nice to hang out with my friends outside of school.”
At the end of the event, STUCO addressed the student body and announced a change in plans for the next two days. Rather than returning to school to continue their regular classes, the next day, students would come to school to compete in color war.
STUCO deliberately planned this color war to differ from previous years. Rather than dividing the teams by grade, as the High School usually does, STUCO mixed the grades together to form teams. Additionally, they broke out color war outside of school to add to the novelty, so this reveal came as a surprise.
When choosing the theme for the two teams, STUCO Co-President Leah Houben explained that they wanted it to involve Chanukah. STUCO eventually decided to model the two teams after the Maccabees and the Greeks; they used lev, heart, to represent the Maccabees and rosh, head, for the Greeks. Leah explained that the Maccabees fought with their heart, as they were inspired by their faith in Hashem. In contrast, the Greeks found their inspiration from their minds, valuing intellect and concrete matters. Team Lev received the color blue as their team color; Team Rosh received the color pink.
STUCO deliberately planned this color war to differ from previous years.
On the third day of Chanukah, students arrived in school decked out in their blue and pink gear, including colorful glasses, bandanas, and even capes. After davening, the teams divided and kicked off the day by learning about their theme.
Afterwards, the focus of the day switched to sports. Teams competed in basketball, football, and volleyball. As students played sports and cheered for each other, other groups of students began to work on their team’s projects. Over the course of the two days, each team was responsible for making a shelet (sign), song, dance, dvar Torah, and video. To end the first day of competition, the entire school met to play Panoply, a game in which students competed to recognize the most logos, songs, zoomed-in-objects, and more.
The next day, after davening and team meetings, students went head-to-head in tug-of-war and bucket brigade, in which students line up to fill buckets of water the quickest. Then, STUCO organized a Chopped challenge in which each team made latkes for a panel of judges. Each team was required to make a “normal” batch, as well as one with less-common ingredients, such as sweet potatoes. Junior Gaviella Bader enjoyed how the activity “incorporated both [Chanukah and Color War].”
After a break for lunch, the two teams competed in an Amazing Race activity. Some of the events included making a human pyramid, parallel parking, and memorizing a paragraph. While Team Rosh started out with the lead, Team Lev made a comeback and won, earning the points for one of the most valuable events in color war.
To conclude color war, everyone met in the gym to present their team’s shelet, song, video, dance, and dvah Torah to the judges. Then students gathered in the center of the gym to sing slow shira as the judges tallied up the points to find the color war winner. Since the color war colors, blue and pink, are often used at gender reveals, STUCO brought in gender reveal supplies to dramatically surprise everyone with the winner. When everyone gathered to see the winner, they opened the bag and blue balloons flew out, revealing Team Lev as the winner.
Team Lev Co-Captain Ella Goldstein stated that “color war was super fun.” She noted, “I was really glad that I was able to be a captain, but even if I wasn’t, I would have loved it because there are so many opportunities for everyone to have a role — whether you’re on shelet or boys dance or video.” Team Lev Co-Captain Daniel Gadelov added that during the two days “the attitude and atmosphere were out of this world.” Similarly, Team Rosh Co-Captain Micah Feit Mann remarked that color war provided a “nice break from regular classes.”
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