Don’t be surprised if Hallway Wars—with a few adjustments—becomes part of the spirit week routine.
    “It looks like it’s a go,” said Stacy Herring, SGO sponsor. “We really want to [make it routine].”
Calling it a great show of school spirit, Principal Pat McCusker said he also hopes that the competition will become an annual tradition at Dulaney.
SGO staged decorating for the first Hallway Wars on Oct. 29. Members of each class were invited to stay after school to plaster their assigned hallway with posters, balloons, streamers, and class colors. In the judging that followed the next week (teachers cast votes for the best decorated hall), the sophomore class won.
   Herring praised the reaction to the competition. In particular, she noted that around 40 freshmen and 40 sophomores turned out to decorate their assigned halls and added that teachers responded positively to the event as well.
   “They said they felt spirited the minute they walked into the school,” Herring said.
     Each class decorated one hallway with a specific theme. The seniors, who chose to do “let the games begin,” taped game pieces to the floor and put pictures of board game covers on the wall. The juniors decorated their hall with teal and black to fit their theme of class colors. The sophomores, decorating with a class colors theme, tacked orange and blue decorations—including dozens of balloons—throughout their entire hall. The freshman hallway was decorated with the theme of 70’s movies to fit with the theme of the homecoming dance, “Saturday Night Fever.”
    The event injected a spirit of competition into homecoming week.   
  “We are seniors, so we are going to win,” Senior Kristin Lorusso said as she and other seniors arranged game pieces for decorating.
   A few corridors away, freshmen like Sasha Maraj begged to differ.
   “I am excited because we want to win and show people that freshmen rule!” Maraj said.    
    Criticism of the hallway wars included students not getting word of the event. “I don’t get it,” said a senior walking with her friend among the decorations the morning after they went up.
    Herring said the administration told SGO that custodians, who had to clean the debris from torn down or fallen decorations, also voiced concern. Additionally, SGO received feedback on the short duration of the decorations, which were removed after school Oct. 30. The problem? Assistant Principal Andrew Last confirmed that movement of the decorations would have set off the alarm system’s motion detectors.
    Such feedback should help SGO fine tune the next hallway war, Herring said. It’s likely the group will ban floor decorations and stage the decorating on a Monday, keeping decorations up for all of spirit week.
                                                      Maysierra Higgins contributed to this report.