By Anastasia Grits, Staff Writer
// Acalanes High School sophomores partook in a scavenger hunt around downtown Lafayette on Aug. 23 and took pictures in front of five preselected locations to compete for gift cards and school merchandise.
While Leadership wanted to create a bonding experience for the sophomores, they had to work around COVID-19 guidelines and ensure students stayed socially distanced.
“It is very difficult during the pandemic to hold bondings that are accessible to everyone because we can’t have too many people in the same place. This is why we decided to do a scavenger hunt and make the hunt open all day for submissions so we were safe about the number of people in a given place,” Sophomore Class President Sierra Lashinsky said.
While some sophomores used the event as an excuse to leave their houses, other participants were concerned about the weather due to the California wildfires.
“It was nice to get out of the house and be able to walk around all of Lafayette, but the smoke made it kind of hard and the heat was also not helping,” sophomore Juan Ruiz said.
Many students enjoyed that the activity was not held over Zoom.
“It was pretty fun because it wasn’t over Zoom, and now everything is on Zoom which can get boring. I think it would be super fun to have more events like this” sophomore Marcella Wisniewska said.
Despite Leadership’s efforts to create the activity, many students had conflicting schedules, resulting in a small turnout.
“I wasn’t able to go, but if I had been free I’m pretty sure I would’ve done it. It seemed interesting because you can explore the city and can find places that you’ve probably never heard about, and I definitely would go to more activities like this in the future so I can participate in more school events,” sophomore Edison Singh said.
Other students did not attend because they were not aware of it ahead of time.
“Unfortunately, I didn’t know about the scavenger hunt until now, so maybe next time, it should be publicized more so that more students hear about it” sophomore Maddie Bacon.
Students that did attend had mostly positive feedback on the event.
“It brought out Acalanes spirit, and it was nice seeing our friends and classmates again,” sophomore Hanna Marzai.
Leadership and class officers will be having grade-specific activities again in the future, so the students that liked the scavenger hunt or weren’t able to participate will have more chances throughout the school year.
“Acalanes doing this was great and really nice, and I was never really involved with the school, so this was a nice opportunity to do that,” Ruiz said.