Every year, Edmond Memorial High School (EMHS) has their annual fundraising week known as Swine Week. To prepare for this event, the Student Council (STUCO) spends all year deciding how it is going to be played out. The organization EMHS is donating to this week is known as the HopeHouse OKC. HopeHouse is a nonprofit that helps homeless women and children to turn their lives around and receive the support they need.

To celebrate, the whole school is decorated with paintings and streamers, revolving around this years theme, “Around the Boarld.” Students dress up and have a blast while raising thousands of dollars each year to help out the community in every way possible. 

Swine Week is always the week before spring break causing everyone to be hype for what is to come. Each day there is an assembly, and for monday the theme was class competition and every grade dresses up in a different color. The freshmen wear red, sophomores blue, juniors white and seniors pink. The whole school attends the assembly and plays different games to win points for their grade. 

The assembly opened up with STUCO members Brock Coleman and Allison Wright firing up the crowd. Everyone stomped their feet and cheered in excitement, and the school spirit had never been higher. During the first part of the show, a video was shown of STUCO members waking up students at 3 a.m. to ask them how many days there were until Swine Week. It is always a hilarious tradition as everyone being filmed is always scared to the point of being hysterical. Some even cried out of confusion of what was going on. 

After obtaining an introduction to the HopeHouse and their mission, the class competition began. It started off with the traditional musical chairs. They had two people from each grade who ran around chairs until the music stopped. It is always intense when it reaches the end and the final two are trying to throw each other out of the seat. The final round was a junior versus a sophomore, and the trophy was given to the sophomores after the sophomore sat on the junior’s head.

The second event was a scavenger hunt. They had one person from each class come down to the gym floor to search for random items. There were objects like a retainer, a pink stanley cup and worst of all: a big ball of chewed up gum from many different people. The sophomore ended up putting it back in his mouth to continue chewing it, having everyone groan in disgust. It was another win for the sophomores with seniors in a close second place. 

During the class competition there are always a few gross events. They usually lead to at least one person becoming sick. This year students licked peanut butter off of another person’s armpit. Furthermore, students chugged a smoothie with olives, sardines, prune juice and cat food. Finally, the contestants ate a banana and drank sprite and milk while running around the gym causing them to be nauseous which was a great show.. Sometimes these can be difficult to witness. The seniors ended up winning the peanut butter and the milk challenges, and the freshmen won the smoothie contest. It was an impressive plot twist when the freshman drank two glasses just to take the chance to show off. 

Another type of competition is less than a game and more of a way to raise money. They pass a bucket around and whichever grade throws the most money into the bucket wins. This is a great way to give people the motivation to donate since there are many competitive people. The sophomores ended up winning both times that the buckets were sent around. 

Continuing the challenges, STUCO did a throwback to an event that happened back when the seniors were freshmen. It was a dunking contest. One athlete from each grade went down and tried to dunk in the coolest way possible. All of the principals judged how impressive they were by scoring them out of ten. The seniors won with a final dunk that knocked the judges socks off.

For the final battle, one person from each grade was blindfolded and had to guess what animals were in boxes. There was a lobster, a rabbit, a gecko and a spider. This ended up in a tie between the sophomores and the seniors, who were definitely the two most competitive classes. 

The final scores were the freshmen with 10, the sophomores with 12, the juniors with one, and finally the reigning champions were the seniors with 14 points. Every grade did a great job getting hype and kicking Swine Week off with a bang. There is still so much more to come over the next few days. All of these events lead up to the final assembly where the grand total is revealed. The whole school has been waiting for this moment to change lives one day at a time, all for the kids.

Contact Anna Frazier at [email protected]