In past years, Student Council has hosted not only a winter week but a Mr. CHS pageant. While the pageant is relatively new, the winter week, and the pep rally that goes with it, has been occurring for several years. However, this year, that will be changing.

“The winter week had been an experiment for two or three years to see if we could capitalize on some of the energy that was coming out of Homecoming and Springfest,” said Matt Fahnestock, co-adviser for Student Council. “So it doesn’t have nearly as long of a tradition as the other two [Homecoming week and Spring Fest] and we didn’t know how it would go.  It seems to have had glitches pretty much every year.”

These glitches usually ranged from lack of participation to weather delaying school and overall delaying school spirit. Another challenge that Student Council faced with Winter Week was coming up for more theme days for the classes to participate in.

Instead of the Winter Week, however, Student Council has organized more activities throughout the year.

“It’s not really eliminating anything; it’s just moving them,” said Fahnestock. “So this year our goal has been to try to have like something pretty much every month. Whereas in the past, we’ve done one week in the fall, one in winter and one in the spring, so now we’re just looking to spread things out.”

Fahnestock added, “It’ll help us from being overwhelmed in short bursts and it will also help spread out more school activities throughout the year.”

One of the events to have been moved is the Mr. CHS pageant, which was moved also due to lack of applicants. Student Council hopes to bring in more applicants with the push back. The application process will also be changed with the modification of people signing up like in previous years and then later filming the video with the Student Council to aide the selection.

“Part of our hope is that by pushing it back, we’ll have that be a big bonus where people will have more time to hear about it and more time to consider if that’s something that they’re interested in,” said Kirsten McMahon, co-advisor for Student Council. “Then that gives us time to find our process for finding applicants for it and those who will actually participate in it,” 

In addition, student council member Delaney Mullen, sophomore, said, “Although it’s sad to cancel these events because a lot of people enjoyed them, it was becoming too much work that didn’t get enough appreciation.”

The elongation of activities is a benefit to the school and helps to ease off pressure on Student Council. It helps to bring in participation as well as encouraging those to have school spirit not just one or two weeks every year but every day.