Two Months Before

The student government meets to plan out the year. They meet with the class advisor and begin to figure out the plan for the 2025-2026 school year. They sit around the table with notebooks and laptops, scheduling the year. But the main thing on their minds…

Pep Rally

“Ever since school starts, that’s the one thing on Student Council’s mind, including Spirit Week, and Pep Rally kind of act as their main priority for the start of the year,” said Vice President Matt Fitzgibbons.

The same goes for the Student Government, too.

Pep rally has been a major part of the year for decades now. This is one of, if not the most important, events of the year for the Student Council and Student Government. As a result, they all feel a lot of pressure to succeed.

“Some officers might feel that they’re under intense pressure to make the school environment the best it can be,” Fitzgibbons said.

Officers worry about letting their class down. The pep rally is a huge part of their responsibilities, and if they fail, their chances of being re-elected plummet. They fear letting their class down and disappointing those whom they serve.

“If it seems stressful to some that organizing pep rally is a pain or something like that. It is not whatsoever knowing that kids will get such a fun and awesome opportunity to go out there and share some school spirit with their classmates,” Fitzgibbons said.

Four Weeks Before

A major element of pep rally is the class shirt. The class of 2028 is no different, creating different designs and ideas and narrowing them down. They spend hours designing and perfecting their designs.

“In the weeks to come, we began to organize the policy behind making a shirt for a class and selling it,” Fitzgibbons said.

Shirts were designed by Parker Rivera, who created five shirt fronts and seven shirt backs. The options were debated and narrowed down by the Student Government, which found the best ones.

Parker Rivera sits in front of his laptop, staring at designs and looking for inspiration. He changed details here and there and built multiple designs. He toys around with a few designs and finds what seems to look the best.

After that, the shirt designs are sent to the class Student Council, who vote to determine the best. The Student Council debates and finally settles on designs  they find the best. A 28 with Hillers written in cursive covering the back, and arching Hopkinton Hillers across the front.

From there, the 10-person student council also votes and prepares to send the designs.

Once the shirt is decided, designs are submitted by the student body. The student council then debates again to  figure out a final design. After discussing, they finalize a shirt and submit it back to the Student Government.

The class shirts are important, as the entire class will wear them all day during pep rally and beyond. There is a balance of price and quality, because these shirts will need to last for other school events.

“We would basically find a shirt design, or like organize the policy that it takes to find a design, whether that’s leaving the class shirt design open to some student submissions, or if that’s finding vendors that can customize these shirts for us,” Fitzgibbons said.

Two Weeks Before

The Student Government is ultimately in charge of its Student Council members, although they usually operate independently of each other. However, during pep rally, it is all hands on deck. While the Student Government remains in charge, they work together to plan and prepare their sections of the event as well as their designs and ideas.

The President of the Student Government, Hugh Desmond, comes to the Student Council meetings to relay information. During this time, group chats containing all members are active, and new ideas are constantly being sent out.

“However, I’d say around two weeks [prior to the pep rally]. And then, we had another week to talk about it with our student council. And then, we were ready to go by the next [meeting],” Cam Boyer said.

The pep rally means a lot to Student Council members as it is one of the most important events they plan. A majority of their time at the beginning of the year is the primarily concerned with pep rally.

“It always feels good to help out your school, and it’s also nice to consider that I have a good amount of friends. It’s nice to have those guys around, and I think it definitely encourages building a sense of community and helping each other. And that was definitely a good time,” Boyer said.

One Week Before & Penny Wars

The Student Council are the ones who do a lot of the setup. The other thing that they have to do is Penny Wars

Two student council members head to Ms. Pucci’s room and carry down four water jugs filled with pennies and other coins. They bring them to a table set up just outside the cafeteria to catch people on their way out. They call out to friends and encourage them to donate while collecting coins for their class. Eventually, their lunch ends, and two more student council members arrive, ready for lunch and take their position, continuing the cycle. The final two members lug the jugs all the way to the third floor, right before class starts, and race their way to their next class, trying not to be late.

Penny Wars happen every year in the week leading up to the pep rally and have been a tradition for many years. Each grade competes with the other to collect the most pennies. They add other coins and bills to other grades to try force loss of points. The grade with the most points wins, and all of the money is used to help the school.

“I would go on to count pennies, for our penny wars fundraiser. Holy. It was a pretty good time,” Boyer said.

Counting the pennies is a huge operation. Tens of Student Council members pile into a room, each taking a jug of pennies and pouring them out. A table is set up with students around it, pulling different denominations of coins into neat piles. They start adding up the pennies, keeping track of each cent. While that happens, another group of people is counting the nickels, dimes, and quarters, preparing to subtract them from the total. Hours later, they finish. They know who won, yet can’t reveal it just yet. They leave the room clean, as though no one had been there, and the only trace is a metal lockbox filled with thousands of coins.

One Day Before & Setup

Despite the long time it takes to prepare for the pep rally, all of the setup happens the night before. Students arrive at school on time and often leave at 8:00 PM that night.

“[We got there at] 7.30 am for school. Then, after school, I had to stay to hand out T-shirts for the pep rally with my class of 2028 officers. Because of that weird amount of time we had left, it was around an hour and a half until 6:30 pm, which is when pep rally prep started. We went out and played football for around an hour and a half. Then we came back in and helped prep for the pep rally. Luckily, I don’t think I got any homework that day because of the pep rally being the next day. So that was nice. I still had to go home, but I was absolutely mentally exhausted,” Boyer said.

A big part of the pep rally was the boomwhackers. They spent hours blowing them up and getting them ready for the entire 400-person class, where each person needed two of them. They spent two separate days blowing them up to prepare.

“I do think there were a couple that we left there, just because all of us were getting lightheaded. We blew them up from Wednesday after school, all the way to Friday before school. There was a lot of. It was a lot of just volume, doing it a ton,” Boyer said.

The class banner lets everyone know where each class stands during the pep rally, besides the shirts, it is another key identifying feature of every class. It has to be bright and clear on who will rally around it.

“Then, I started working on the posters or helped just decorate the bleacher sides,” Boyer said.

The Athletic Center has to be set up and decorated the night before. If it’s set up earlier, then it will interfere with gym classes. So every student council and student government member has to meet up in the gym to decorate and make the gym ready for the pep rally.

“I’d say every member of the student council and student government typically goes into the gym if they can for two or three hours, and there’s usually a big bucket of decorations and craft supplies that you can use to help decorate your section of the gym, including all the donations that you receive as a class,” Fitzgibbons said.

“We made the signs. That’s what I remember the most. But, firstly, we put ribbons across the top, going down the sides of our bleachers to kind of add some color to them,” Boyer said.

Pep Rally

In the morning, before officers and student council members finish up whatever else needs to be finished.

“After that, I think it’s all just execution. You gotta get to your spot during the dates for handing out t-shirts and handing them out,” Fitzgibbons said.

Once that’s finished, everything runs itself. The pep rally only takes an hour or so, and then it is cleaning up all of the mess that took weeks to create. Then Student Council goes home and relax until they prepare for the next big event.