Fifth annual Shark Fiesta leaves an impression on clubs and students

Excitement, joy, and laughter fill the atmosphere at the annual Shark Fiesta.

Since the new school year began, many students immediately looked forward to the annual Shark Fiesta held on September 20, 2019. On the day of the school-wide event, students ranging from sixth to twelfth grade were buzzing with excitement for what was to come. However, while many students were in high spirits, others had doubts as to whether the Shark Fiesta would be worth attending.

A dance performed by Mavis Goh (11A), Irene Zhang (10A), Yeseo Jeon (10A), and Stephanie Lee (11C) Photo courtesy of Mina Chen (9B)

Although the Shark Fiesta was meant to start at 5:00 PM, by 4:30 PM, the concrete area was already filled with students who were thrilled for the activities and performances to start. As the event officially began and more people gathered, it became quite easy to lose a friend in the crowd. Later, when it was time for the performances to start, students and faculty members gathered at the center of all the booths and watched the first set of performers perform on stage. From dancing to magic shows to singing, each performance filled the air with cheers and applause from students and teachers.

While the Shark Fiesta looks easy enough to organize from the outside, the amount of time and effort the clubs that participated put in that deserves some recognition. When the new food policies banning homemade food were introduced, many clubs that based their booths off of homemade food faced a challenge. However, clubs like SPC (Student Prom Committee), CFK (Cookies for Kids), and the Spanish/French clubs decided to sell packaged food. Oscar Su (11B), the president of SPC, expressed that the new rule was not as bad as it seemed, since earning money was not the only goal that they had. “Clearly, clubs had more activities rather than food selling. Clubs were also limited on what they can sell, so the new policy generally decreased the students’ favor of foods. However, I don’t see any disadvantages after the implementation of the new policy since clubs were actually recruiting new members instead of just trying to earn money,” Oscar said. Kai Yuen (11A), a member of SPC, seemed to disagree, saying, “It is difficult for clubs to choose what to sell on Shark Fiesta, and we had to compete between other clubs to buy other packaged food so there weren’t any repeats. We also had to make sure that we were buying popular packaged foods or else our sales would be affected.”

Moving onto the perspective of students who are not a part of the clubs mentioned above, some actually had a few interesting thoughts on this year’s Shark Fiesta. Nima Ma’u (7A), suggested, “I think that next year they could add middle schoolers into the booths and part of organizing the whole thing since all they had this year were HS students.” Many middle schoolers seemed to be interested in being a part of the booths and helping out.

As I went around the school finding students to interview on what they thought of the Shark Fiesta, I asked, “If you could use one word to describe this year’s Shark Fiesta, what would it be and why?” Oscar used the word renew, saying, “It brought back the original purpose of the event, which is to recruit new members, typically freshmen, to the clubs.” Oscar mentioned that the Shark fiesta successfully combined both activities and food equally, as the event was more food-based for the past few years. Christoph Deckert (9C), used “interesting” as his word to describe this year’s Shark Fiesta, simply because he thought it could have been better if there were more activities. Christoph also expressed that when there were multiple activities going on at the same time, students had to choose between watching the performances or participating in the activities.

Despite some of the troubles that were encountered during this year’s Shark Fiesta, many had a great time watching the performances and enjoying club activities with their friends. It’s exciting to think about how the Shark Fiesta will grow and change in the upcoming years!

Featured Image — Jun Fu (11C), Oscar Su (11B), Hyewon Rha (11B), Cathelina Xu (12B), Mina Um (11B) perform a dance during Shark Fiesta Courtesy of Mina Chen (9B)

By Sara Tee