Senior Scavenger Hunt: A Night To Remember
“It was a wild night… Awesome if you let loose!” said senior Jenna Hannafin.
Hannafin and over 100 members of the senior class participated in the infamous SKHS Halloween tradition, known as the Senior Scavenger Hunt, yet only nine walked away victorious.
The victors Christina Armstrong, Maddie West, Celia Tomlinson, Isabelle Pesante, Julia Livingston, Owen Tally, Jackson Dunn, Aiden McCaughey and Will Moffat all earned themselves $62 for completing various tasks, such as eating a ghost pepper and stick of butter with even one student getting a tattoo.
Prior to the event, new Principal Mezzanotte emailed senior class parents requesting that “students not take part” in the scavenger hunt event.
“In the past,” Mezzanotte wrote, “[the scavenger hunt] has directly led to acts of vandalism, injury and disorderly conduct. Parents are advised to restrict their children from participating in this unsanctioned activity.”
Mr. Matteson, who has taught at SKHS since the very first scavenger hunt, roughly twenty years ago, explained how much easier it is for today’s generation to find themselves in a sticky situation.
“People think they don’t leave a footprint,” he commented, “but stuff never goes away.”
According to Matteson, students should be wary of posting pictures of illegal or questionable activity from the annual Halloween night event.
The class of 2013 caused an uproar among parents and townspeople after inappropriate photos of the night appeared online in the days following the event.
This year’s class of 2016 was happy to note that no arrests were made.
Co vice-president Maddie West assured seniors and their parents that no photos or videos from the night would be revealed to the public. She explained that before the scavenger hunt began every senior was made aware that all content of the event was not to be shared.
“We had everyone sign a waiver,” West said, “so they knew the rules and possible implications of their actions.”
West added that “teams were only allowed to record on cameras with SD cards, so that no pictures would remain on phones.
“At the end of the night class office collected all of the SD cards,” West said. “After reviewing the content, and awarding points, class office destroyed each SD card so nothing remained from that night.”
All items completed from the last had to be recorded as a video in order to provide full evidence of completion. The list was distributed on Halloween night and was comprised of tasks taken from the Senior Scavenger Hunt facebook page as well as items from last year’s list.
Class office member and co-vice president Brianna McGrath explained the process of creating the list.
“We wrote all the tasks on the list, and then assigned point values to each task. The list [ran] in increasing order based on which tasks were easy and which were most difficult or crazy. When one person earns a point,” McGrath said, “it’s for their whole team. Whichever team accumulates the most points wins.”
According to McGrath, teams paid $5 a person and the winning team was awarded 80 percent of the total profits. The senior class earned about $150 in total.
Some class office members like McGrath were allowed to participate. Historian Hannah Sorlien explained that “only one [class office] member was allowed per team.”
Overall, the night was definitely a success for class office and seniors alike.
“Senior scavenger hunt was a really fun night and a great bonding experience for our class!” said West.
