Grades to compete against each other in Color War

On Friday, May 24, grades will be competing against each other in a color war, where students will have the chance to flex their physical and cognitive abilities to beat out the other grades’ teams. Because it’s a color war, each grade is a different color. Freshman are sand, sophomores are gray, juniors are black and seniors are pink.

According to Assistant Principal Krysten Malloy, the purpose is “just to be a fun, competitive thing to close off the year, kind of build up some community within each grade level and work together.” 

Student interest and excitement varies. Some students, like freshman Tanraj Khaira, are enthusiastically looking forward to it.

“Let’s go Team Sand,” said Khaira, who will be competing in kickball. “I’m going to destroy every other team,” he said.

Overall, the Black Team seems to be the most excited.

“I feel like QSI has never done anything like this and I think it’ll be really fun,” said Jada Wicker, a junior on the Black Team who is signed up for the scavenger hunt.

Though many students are excited, some are either unaware or apathetic. 

“I do not know why this is happening; I do not know what this is,” said Pink Team member Erwin Forero. “I was in the dark about this.” 

Several students who knew about it said that they weren’t going to come to school on Friday. Others said they would come but not participate. This begs the question of what would get more students interested.

“Maybe if there was an appealing prize that is shown to them,” said Zaylin Brown, who will participate in the tug-of-war and quiz bowl for the Gray Team. “Maybe people would want to go but, sorry to say this, nobody wants school swag, like maybe a gift card or something that people would want,” she said. 

At least one student, Rochell Primo, who is on the Gray Team, will be boycotting the event.

“The reason I’m not interested in a color war is because I don’t believe in wars,” said Primo.

Administration had considered how using the term “war” might not be the best choice. According to Malloy, they talked about calling it color competition or something more positive, but decided to keep it color war because “ultimately, a lot of the teachers have been a part of it from camps and stuff and that’s what they knew it to be.” 

Teachers will be running the events and each team has two teacher leaders: Teri Sabella and Bobby Pineiro for the Sand Team, Nicole Francipane and Daniel Robertson for the Gray Team, Lisa San Martin and Barry Frank for the Black Team and Jeff Martin and Lindsey Sequeira for the Pink Team. The leaders have different strategies for getting their teams ready.

 Piniero is taking a wait-and-see approach with the Sand Team.

“I think we’re just going to do our best and prepare and get motivated, we don’t really have any other strategy,” said Pineiro. “I’m hoping that the ninth grade, in the end, will rally and get creative, show their motivation, and their want to win and that’ll get them over the finish line.”

The leaders for the Pink Team are being a little more proactive.

“I definitely encourage students to practice for the events they signed up for since there are so many different events,” said Robertson.

And San Martin is taking a more hands-on approach with the Black Team.

“We’re going to start training during lunch once the AP tests are finished,” said San Martin. “We’re going to focus on the egg race, we have no one in the egg race. And I convinced some students not to go on Mr. DiMonte’s trip so they can stay for Color War.”

With just a couple of days left, students are looking forward to competing, but also see other benefits.

Khalid Ahmad who will doing the basketball event for the Pink Team, sees it as a way to “socialize with a lot more people around the school.” 

Renzo Arias plans to participate in the spelling bee for the Black Team and sees positive benefits, besides winning.

“There’s like an encouragement to students to be creative and build teamwork skills with events like this,” said Arias.

Senior Emilia O’Brien agrees that there are positives, but thinks there are possible disadvantages as well.

“It can bring grades together but it could also bring animosity between grades,” said O’Brien, who’s on the Pink Team and will be playing kickball.  “Definitely with the poster thing, there was one team that disfigured another team’s poster so that team retaliated and it created this long effect,” she said.

Another issue that students have been wondering about is the odd choices of colors: sand, gray, black and pink.

“I did not pick them out,” said Malloy. “You can ask Mr. Martin about that. I would’ve never picked out those colors,” she said.

Martin defended the choice of colors.

“The reason we picked those colors is that there is color powder that was purchased and we wanted muted colored T-shirts so this way the powder would stand out on the T-shirts,” said Martin.