RUMPUS in the biggest event of the Darlington year, and if you have ever been, you know it’s an unskippable experience. All six houses in the school take part, and everyone looks forward to it. Each house gets its own special theme, and their dance and t-shirts are inspired by the theme they choose. About a month before the big show, students either perform a skit or make and show a video to reveal what their theme will be. These skits and videos are funny, creative and full of surprises. Each house had a different approach, all catered to the themes they selected for this RUMPUS year.
The themes were announced in this order: Moser revealed their theme of Moser Gold Rush, Thornwood revealed Thornwood Casino, Summerbell’s theme was Summerbell Weather Channel, Cooper as the Cooper Troopers, Neville revealed Neville Road Trip and Regester’s theme was A Nightmare on REG Street.
“I am really excited for this year’s RUMPUS, and the theme that Neville House chose was road trip,” senior Myles Twyman said. “It was very exciting to finally be the head prefect of Neville because I get to help everyone know the spirit of RUMPUS and know how much it means to the returning students. What we did for our skit is we had senior Sammy Lewis drive in on a mini G-Wagon playing a well known song, “Ridin”, and then announced our theme.”
Day head prefect of Summerbell House, senior Hayes Parsa, discusses the difficulties and challenges that come with RUMPUS preparation. Most of the leaders are thinking about their next theme throughout the year, and the leader teams begin prep as early as summer time. There are hundreds of students that participate in the Lip-Sync event and other RUMPUS events, and because of this large number, it requires a significant amount of effort to unite everyone and keep everyone on the same page.
“I consider myself the facilitator of my house because I will be putting a lot of of the people in places that they will be comfortable to be in,” Parsa said. “From the past years that I’ve won, I have realized that it’s not all about one person, and I’m not going to throw myself in every event, and instead it’s more about strategy and how you use all the people in your house. I also am organizing everything with my Lip-Sync and getting everybody in places, and helping a lot with the songs. I really am excited for this RUMPUS because I believe that we can win.”
A leader of Regester House, Aryana Patel gives her perspective on how hard it is and how much effort it takes to make a theme reveal video. Regester’s theme was announced as “A Nightmare On REG Street”, and she explains it took a lot of trial and error while trying to make and edit the video. Patel believes that her house’s theme is good because there are many songs that they can choose from. They can be creative with all of the songs and dance moves that they will throw onto the dance floor in Lip-Sync.
“Going through all the clips and editing all the clips was a very challenging thing, and I really wanted to make it good so I could get some RUMPUS points early on in the competition,” senior Patel Said. “It took multiple attempts to make this clip because we kept laughing while making it, but overall, it took me maybe two hours to put together the whole video and make it look nice to show in front of the whole school. I am really excited about this theme because we can use it in so many different ways.”