BY Daniella Rapparport
Staff Writer
A fun new addition to this year’s character week were character grams. Conceived by the Associated Student Body (ASB) and organized by Service Commissioners Neah Lekan (Jr.) and Brandon Kaufman (Sr.), the grams were designed to be a creative way to recognize students and staff who exemplify the pillars of character.
“It was kind of one of those moments where it was an accumulative body,” said Kaufman. “Someone had mentioned doing a lunch fest on pillars of character…from there, everyone started pitching ideas. Through this came the beautiful character grams idea.”
Though the idea was a collaborative ASB effort, Lekan and Kaufman took on the responsibility of planning character week. Lekan explained, “The idea of a gram popped up…and then we made the action plan.”
Preparations began the week following Spirit Week, and with only a week and a half for planning time. When asked about the process, Kaufman explained, “ [The Service Commissioner’s’] job was to plan character week…the biggest thing about planning the week that we found the most effective was [delegating] to other people within ASB.”
Following the instructions of Lekan and Kaufman, ASB Publicity members Callie Bacino (Sr.), Betty Fan (Sr.), and Ashley Kim (Sr.) created a chalkboard drawing of the character grams on the outside of the 500s building. Above each character gram was the corresponding pillar.
Choosing the chalkboard as their canvas, Publicity created an attention grabbing display showing each character gram under the pillar of character it was identifying.
“The whole idea is promoting positivity so we wanted to incorporate something new, and so with the chalkboards we wanted to not just have [the grams] put out, but rather have them up for display where everyone at school could see.” said Fan.
Monday of character week, the mural was complete
When asked how long the chalkboard took, Fan answered, “The chalkboards took an entire day. Each board took around six hours to design but I think in the end it wasn’t how much time we put into but rather the outcome that the kids get from it.”
The gram was designed by Bacino. The simple design was printed on a blue card in order to catch student’s eyes and add to the colorful decoration of the chalkboard.
Kaufman feels that grams are unique since “not everyone…goes up to their friends and says, ‘Oh, I really like the way you show compassion,’ It’s so much easier to write…to somebody and tell them how you feel. By doing a character gram it’s just another way to tell people you care.