By Lily Chen and Faith Zantua, Co-News Editors
Extended homeroom, a block schedule filled with several activities and a rally in the gym. On Friday, students attended the annual Unity Fair, hosted by Peer Mediation, that boasted various changes to the schedule as well as the festivities.
Junior Charlie Gawthrop, a Peer Mediation executive, helped lead the preparation behind the event. Planning started around January with the goal of emphasizing the community aspect of Unity Fair.
“Cornucopia and Unity Fair, during the past, we felt (were) really boring to be honest,” Gawthrop said. “So I said in class, maybe we just want to focus back on the unity side: coming together.”
Unity Fair began with an extended homeroom, during which Peer Mediation members prepared the school for the event while students listened to a video with instructions regarding the fair, played a trivia Kahoot and made service cards. Following homeroom, students participated in various activities during four 40-minute periods.
“Our biggest goal this year was definitely to make it more organized and definitely to change the mindset around Peer Mediation and Unity Fair,” said sophomore Vibha Besagi, a Peer Mediation executive who helped plan the event. “Previously, more people were like, ‘Oh, it’s just Unity Fair. I can leave school early after fourth period,’ or something like that. But this year, we wanted people to be excited for Unity Fair and stay in school to get more engagement.”
Activities were located inside the building as well as at the track, including slime making, coloring and athletic games. Clubs sold food and merchandise, and participants contributed to the community care package drive. Attendees went to activities without the need to check in with their normal teachers for attendance. Instead, they used online sign-in forms.
After the four periods, students went to lunch during different times based on their grade or homeroom. Then, they attended the new, approximately hour-long Unity Rally. The event finished off the fair as all students gathered to watch the final round of ’Stoga Survivor, two rounds of the basketball game “Knockout” and musical chairs.
Sophomore Amy Li, a Peer Mediation executive, prepared ’Stoga Survivor, a competition based off of the TV show “Survivors.” Peer Mediation changed some of the games that participants played during the event.
“I feel like what I’ve been trying to do with ’Stoga Survivor is very reflective of what we’re trying to do with Unity Fair: Just to have fun (and) make sure that the student body feels a little bit more connected because Conestoga is a very competitive school. I feel like what we do with Unity Fair and Cornucopia is that we try to close a gap,” Li said.
Throughout the fair, participants competed to earn points for their respective team, garnet or gray, that Peer Mediation assigned by homeroom. At the end, organizers announced the gray team as the winner of Unity Fair.
Junior Maryorie Urbina attended and enjoyed Unity Fair, especially because of the ability to meet with friends and the opportunities it brought for clubs to sell food or items.
“It’s well organized, and we’re more with our friends during lunch especially. It’s new. It’s kind of weird because (the changes) came out of nowhere, but in general, I really like it,” Urbina said. “The highlight is that there’s outside games, like your club can participate. If they didn’t have a chance during the year, they had one now, so I think it’s really inclusive.”
Lily Chen can be reached at [email protected].
Faith Zantua can be reached at [email protected].
