After a week filled with exciting competitions, palpable team spirit, and inspiring collaborative efforts, Spirit Week 2024 came to a close on Friday, October 25 with the three culminating competitions of the week. These events – Red & Blue Day, Hallway, Airband, and the scoring announcement for the Penny Game – were the determining factors of the week’s final results, which were announced at the Spirit Week Dance on Friday night and greeted with considerable disagreement.

To start the day, students, parents, and faculty members were graced with sights of creatively decorated hallways as they traversed the Upper School throughout the morning. The basement hallways were adorned with decorations displaying the ninth graders’ Batman theme and tenth graders’ Coraline theme, while upstairs, the juniors’ Lego theme and seniors’ Alice in Wonderland theme covered the walls.

Soon after, students from each grade, who had worn red and blue colors in a show of MFS spirit, crowded the entrance to the Upper School office in hopes of gaining points for their grades. Underclassmen were instructed to sign in with Dean of Students Will Miller for points, while upperclassmen were directed to the desk of Administrative Assistant Gina Imperiale. According to a new rule this year, students could only sign in for Red & Blue points between 9:30 and 10:45 a.m.

Finally, during the Community Time block beginning at 11:50 a.m., students, faculty, and families gathered in the auditorium to watch the annual Airband competition. As community members entered the space, Miller amped up the energy by playing Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration.” Continuing a tradition initiated last year, Airband began with a video created by faculty members, which was centered around the theme of lacking coffee on campus.

Soon after, the ninth graders took the stage for their performance, followed by the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth graders respectively. The auditorium was filled with cheers and shouts from fellow students as each grade took the stage, with family members filling the back of the room after receiving an invite to attend from Upper School Director Noah Rachlin. For the first time, eighth-grade students also joined the audience to get a taste of Upper School Spirit Week’s most anticipated event.

Following the Red & Blue Day, Hallway, and Airband competitions, conversations about which grade would take first place at the end of the week filled the halls as students anticipated the announcement of the final results at the night’s Spirit Week Dance.

Around 9:15 p.m., about two hours after the Spirit Week Dance’s start, Miller entered the Dining Hall to announce the final results as students crowded the front of the room to get a good listen. Miller began with the results of the Operation Smile Penny Game, which had closed the day before at 1 p.m.

Before announcing the placement, Miller announced that the Upper School had raised exactly $1473.34 towards the Operation Smile charity, an amount that Operational Smile Club co-president Anna Thompson ’25 described as “a huge success.” In the Penny Game competition, the tenth graders took first place in the event, followed by the ninth graders in second, the twelfth graders in third, and the eleventh graders in last. Regarding the success of the game, Thompson noted that she is “really proud of the community for all the donations [that] they made.”

Next, Miller moved on to the results of the Red & Blue Day competition, first explaining that, overall, the Upper School had been very successful in the competition. There were two ties in the event, one between the underclassmen and one between the upperclassmen. Among the underclassmen, only four students per grade had neglected to wear red and blue or sign in while doing so, and in the upperclassmen grades, only one student per grade hadn’t signed in wearing red and blue gear.

In total, 100 points were available for each grade to earn in the competition; according to the Spirit Week scoreboard, the first-place winner would usually win 50 points, second place would win 25, third would win 15, and fourth would win 10. This year, however, the ninth and tenth graders tied for second place, receiving the average of the 3rd and 4th-place points: 12.5 points. The eleventh and twelfth graders tied for first place, receiving an average of the first- and second-place point totals, resulting in the two grades receiving 37.5 points each.

As the Upper School held its breath in anticipation, Miller prepared to announce the results of the week’s two biggest events, Hallway and Airband, which are both worth double the points of every other Spirit Week event. Each grade’s placement in the two competitions was announced differently this year, with Miller explaining how many first-, second-, third-, and fourth-place votes each grade had received in each competition before announcing the overall placement. The votes were cast by an anonymous board of faculty and staff chosen to judge both competitions.

The final results of the Hallway competition were as follows: the juniors in first with 200 points, sophomores in second with 150 points, freshmen in third with 100 points, and finally, seniors in last with 50 points. In Airband, the seniors placed first, gaining 200 points, with the juniors at second for 150 points, sophomores at third for 100 points, and freshmen at last for 50 points.

Soon after, the Dean’s Points and Deductions each grade had received were announced. Per the final Spirit Week scoreboard, the ninth grade received 50 extra points for “going above and beyond in breakdown/clean-up effort [after Hallway],” while the juniors and seniors both lost 25 points. While the seniors were previously aware of the deduction they received due to submitting their theme days late, the juniors were not previously aware of the deduction received for turning in their T-shirt design one or two days late.

This factor became increasingly significant after the final results of Spirit Week 2024 were announced. Explained in reverse order, Miller announced that, with 556.25 points, the freshmen came in last, while the sophomores came in third with 625 points. The juniors finished the week with 706.25 points, and the seniors with 712.5 points. 

Some junior students were immediately upset about the deduction. 

“I think it’s very unfair, because [Class President Anjali Shah ’26] showed Mr. Miller [afterward] that we hadn’t turned in anything late, while the seniors turned in a lot of things late so they should’ve had more deductions,” explained Sophia LoRe ’26. According to LoRe, Miller “declined to say anything” about the callout because “the seniors had already been announced [as winners].”

This 6.25 point difference between the juniors and seniors was a major point of contention for the juniors, who claimed that they should not have lost the 25 points in Dean’s Deductions, or that the seniors should’ve had more deductions to their score due to the alleged tardiness of their Airband intro video and T-shirt design in addition to the acknowledged late theme day submission. 

Had either of those occurred, the juniors would have taken the title of Spirit Week winners, which LoRe believes “[they] deserved.” 

Others had reservations about the results announced by Miller, including ninth grader Aryanna Dalal. 

“The freshmen, when it came to Airband, deserved more … [and] same with the juniors. I feel that they worked very hard, and theirs was amazing,” said Dalal. Regarding comments that the eleventh-grade Airband performance had been better than the twelfth-grade’s, Ava Patel ’25 noted that “I think the seniors winning Airband was … deserving, because we had a lot of variety in our dances and included everybody, which the juniors [did not do].” 

On the week as a whole, Dalal noted that “overall, Spirit Week was amazing, especially when [my grade] won Eliminator.” 

LoRe shared this sentiment, explaining that “I really liked the energy and support that everybody provided, especially during Airband and for the freshmen in general.” She did, however, maintain that “the juniors deserved to win [the overall competition].” 

Seniors, on the other hand, were pleased with the results. 

“The seniors winning Spirit Week is definitely something to celebrate … my class has been looking forward to this since we were freshmen,” remarked Patel.