This past weekend, the freshman class joined together for Fresh Fest, a tradition started last year that brings the entire class together for a night with team-building activities, competition and no phones. Students competed with their assigned houses to earn points that carry over to RUMPUS, the upcoming school-wide event where the six houses compete for the title of RUMPUS champions. Events included dodgeball, trivia and other RUMPUS-related activities. Freshman Thornwood House day student Olivia Crane was one of the many freshman that participated in this event. She shares why she thinks Fresh Fest is important.
“I think it’s important because it shows the freshman a little taste of RUMPUS and lets the houses bond together, and it gets everybody so excited to be in their house, because they don’t really know what it kind of entails,” Crane said. “It helped me know some of the newer girls with all the different games that we played.”
Fresh Fest helps the freshman class get to know each other better and learn more about RUMPUS and how it works. The night was filled with lots of activities and challenges for the students to compete in. These were based off of multiple events that the students may participate in in RUMPUS, which include dodgeball, trivia, ice-breakers, and learning their house chants.
“I think Fresh Fest is important because it unites all the freshmen together and creates a bonding activity. We did a lot of teamwork with trivia and dodgeball working together,” freshman Thomas Fitzgerald said.
A key part of this event is the no phone policy. When the students arrived, the faculty took their phones and kept them until it was time to leave. Many students have differing opinions on this implication.
“It changed the event because no one was distracted by their phones, so we could talk more to our peers, and just experience it better without having distractions,” freshman Anne Walker Ellington said.
The no phone rule was created to allow freshman to bond with each other, rather than being distracted by their phones. However, some students thought differently about this policy.
“I feel like it was good to be off first screens for a long time, but it was kind of weird, because it was a long period of time and it was late so I feel like we should have had our phones during the end just in case our parents didn’t text us, because we didn’t have them until walking out the door to leave,” Crane said. “So I thought that was kind of important, because I had a couple of texts from my parents.”
The freshman were required to wear their assigned house shirts to Fresh Fest to allow other students and faculty to know which house they were in, so it was easier to group them and give the house points without confusion. But some students were not fond of this requirement.
“I think we could have not wore our house shirts and maybe have fresh fest shirts,” Ellington said.