The senior class has officially ended their highschool careers and they did it celebrating the past four years with the annual senior picnic. The picnic is organized by the class planners and it is the first of two big events at the end of the year for the grade. It took place at Smokey Glen Farm on May 10 and ran from 5 to 7 p.m..

For class planners, months are spent planning the picnic down to every last detail and they focus on advertising and selling tickets. “The hardest part of the senior picnic was figuring out the prices of tickets. We wanted to make it as low as possible for students using our fundraised money but also needed to estimate how many people were going to buy tickets and come,” class president Kelly Ren said.

Since the picnic has taken place at the same location for the past few years, the planning process was easier than expected. “We’ve done it the last few years at Smokey Glen Farm so we schedule it a year out and they do a lot of the work involved,” class sponsor and music teacher Keith Schwartz said.

While planners put effort into every detail of the picnic, there are still some unforeseeable circumstances that can sometimes affect the outcome of the picnic’s attendance. This year during the picnic it poured the entire time. Despite the rain, the turnout of the picnic was still a success in the eyes of Schwartz. “The rain is hard, but there were still a lot of people even with that complication. There is a large covered area for people to eat in,” Schwartz said.

Although the rain didn’t affect the turnout it did have an impact on what space was available for use. Since Smokey Glen Farm has a lot of outdoor space it was hard to cover when the rain started. This resulted in a large portion of the space not being available for use. “It just meant we couldn’t use the outside part as much, but it was still great,” Schwartz said.

Since the picnic has been at the same place every year, most of the planning for class planners involves advertising. All of the planners have to go around and share information as well as flyers to encourage people to buy tickets for the picnic. Their job is to “advertise about the event and get their friends to go,” Schwartz said.
During the picnic, people have space to roam around and talk to their friends as well as play sports with their friends. Two sports they had available this year were basketball and minigolf. “The best part was definitely the golf course even though it was on a hill so it was hard to play,” senior Sam Rosenzweig said.

The picnic was seen as a bonding experience for seniors in their last few days of high school. Seniors showed up to picnic wearing shirts representing where they will be going to college next year. “The best part of the picnic was getting together with everyone in the grade,” senior Margo Brown said.