Color Wars?  What part of being walked around the school by a teacher is a war?  When I was a freshman, color wars the most unbelievable experience of the year.  It was by far the highlight of spirit week and everyone went full out.  When talking to a couple of graduated students of Vernon Hills, they responded by saying, “We just remembered running through the halls as fast as we could, and all of the seniors being crazy.”  They said that the most fun thing about Color Wars was doing everything you could to win.  People ran around and threw paint, balloons, confetti, or anything they had with their respective color.

When I was a freshman, the Junior Class had a yellow shopping cart and pushed kids around through the halls.  The classes got to decide where they wanted to meet in the morning and would clash all day throughout the halls of the school.  Christopher White (12), remembers a pair of tie-dye underwear being thrown at him when he was a freshman.  Recently, it has regressed into a lame, controlled parade.  In a recent survey of the senior class, an overwhelming majority said that the best year of Color Wars was when we were freshman (2013).  There were only four students who responded that they actually liked having teacher chaperones for Color Wars: Donald Trump, Harambe, El Chapo, and my sister.  The most common response for what seniors think could be done to improve the recent Color Competition was to have less structure, more leniency, and most important, no teacher chaperones.  Cru Leader, Jack Forester (12) said, “They need to let the big dawgs eat.”

Forester said, “It was the most fun to just have the freedom to be with your classmates and have fun.  However, it is kind of upsetting to see what Color Wars has turned into. The underclassmen can’t even experience what it was really like.”  Forester wants to “Make Color Wars great again.”  I think that we can all agree that we would like to get Color Wars back to the way it was before.

The thing is, realistically, if there are people who get their feelings hurt, people who have to scrape paint off the walls, or even one person hurt, the teachers and staff would say that it is absolutely not worth it.  However, if we are able to prove to them that we can control ourselves without anyone getting injured, then I think that we can take a step in the right direction of getting our Color Wars back.  When interviewing Tina Blomgren the security guard about the teacher chaperones, she said, “Problems come when there is no supervision.  We want to provide a controlled environment.  When chaos breaks out, people get injured and we want everyone to feel safe, have fun, and be spirited.  You can have fun in a controlled environment.”

I think that there is a compromise that needs to be made.  We can admit that advocating total anarchy would not get any support in the minds of these teachers and administrators.  There should be some supervision in the halls, but last year’s “parade” was one of the biggest disappointments.  Blomgren suggests, “Maybe you all can propose a creative idea to administration for something that could work for all of us.”  Maybe there needs to be a teacher in every hall, no fighting other classes, or maybe a stricter policy on the punishment for people who break the rules, but something needs to change.  If we can communicate and find a middle ground, I think that we can really start to make Color Wars a lot better.