Sheila C. Bellamy
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‘Project Graduation’ returns to offer venue for drug-free fun
Anna Gillette
Jun 10, 2026
File photo
A years-long tradition is returning to Housatonic Valley Regional High School, aiming to provide a safe and fun environment for seniors to celebrate their graduation.
The annual event, called Project Graduation, takes place after seniors receive their diplomas on June 19. HVRHS Assistant Principal Steven Schibi promoted the event as a drug and alcohol free alternative to private parties outside of school grounds.
“It’s just to give our seniors one last fun moment with each other that is free of alcohol or drugs,” Schibi said. “We just want a dry, fun place to be, with food and games for the seniors.” The night starts at 10 p.m. “That way kids can go home or go out to eat with family if they want,” Schibi said.
The night will have a range of activities to keep students entertained throughout the six hour long event. The activities include axe throwing, karaoke, laser tag, hide and seek, bouncy houses and a raffle to conclude the event. “We use the auditorium to show movies, and the band room for video gaming,” Schibi said. “Kids can do laser tag in the hallways. Last year they went out and played manhunt in the fields.”
Class president Madison Graney helped organize the event. “There’s definitely going to be lots of food, candy, and an ice cream bar,” she said. “We’re going to play games all night.”
For the most part, students are able to move freely throughout the school. “It’s not a free for all,” Schibi said. “But it’s a lot of fun.” Teachers volunteer to stay for different shifts or throughout the entire night, ensuring everyone’s safety and monitoring activities. Senior class advisors Leticia Garcia-Tripp and Jeffery Tripp will spend the entire night, along with superintendent Melony Brady-Shanley.
“I feel like most people won’t sleep,” Graney said. The celebration ends at 4:30 a.m. but students can leave any time before then if picked up by a parent.
Students who face difficulties organizing a ride home will be dropped off at the middle school in their town by PTO members. “Nobody drives home,” Schibi said.
Garcia-Tripp emphasized the upside of staying until the end. “If you want to get a raffle prize, stay,” she said. Raffle prizes include things like microwaves, mini fridges, electronics, and gift cards. These items are donated through an annual appeal to community members and businesses.
But students have to stay the whole time to participate in the raffle. “If people choose to leave, then they leave, and they don’t get to partake in the raffle,” Schibi said.
The event is primarily organized by Schibi and FFA secretary Sara Jack, along with help from senior class advisors, class officers, and a few contributions from junior parents. “Their role is to go out and solicit businesses for the food portion, and to pick up and drop off food the day of,” Schibi said. “Some of them will come and help decorate or set up tables and stuff like that. We’ve even had a couple that would stay overnight.”
Putting together this event takes a lot of work, but year after year it proves to be worth the effort. Students have a memorable experience, leave with a prize, and keep themselves out of harmful situations. “It’s going to be the last time that we’re all together as a class, so I think it’s going to be really special,” Graney said.
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Back-to-back field trips trigger questions about classroom disruptions
Ibby Sadeh
Jun 10, 2026
A group of Housatonic Valley Regional High School students participate in the NEXT women symposium in New York City.
Provided
One week in April saw some students missing classes for three field trips in a row, prompting questions about the impacts that back-to-back trips have on classroom performance.
The trips — one each on April 7, April 8 and April 9 — took many of the same students out of the classroom for each one. Students and teachers expressed a range of responses to the back-to-back trips, acknowledging a field trip’s ability to enhance classroom learning but expressing frustration over how trips can sometimes disrupt in-school learning.
Housatonic Valley Regional High School senior Sara Ireland went on three trips to New York City that week. “To some it might sound like a nightmare but I really did enjoy it,” Ireland said.
The first trip was NEXT Women Symposium, to talk to seven professional women and hear their experiences in male dominated fields, organized by Abby Auerbach. The second was for the AP Lit and English 12 Honors class to see “Death of a Salesman” on Broadway, providing hands-on experience with a Broadway production as the class learned and read plays. The third was for Chorus, Band, and the musical theater society to see Hadestown and The Great Gatsby on Broadway.“These field trips weren’t just fun outings, they were genuine experiences that help to shape student’s interest, help their futures, and of course are still fun,” Ireland said.
Social Studies teacher John Lizzi is generally supportive of field trips, but he said trips should be a supplement to classroom schooling. “I think in general field trips can be extremely valuable depending on the class, depending on what the experience offers and I think there are times when they really need to happen. Teachers should be looking for those types of really unique opportunities for their students when they apply to the curriculum,” Lizzi said. “Teachers should try to get everything they can out of the classroom experience, what can be done inside the classroom, and that should be the primary focus, but there’s always going to be things that you cannot do in the classroom, so we should have those opportunities.” Ireland called attention to the impact of getting out of the classroom. “It can feel really overwhelming being stuck in a classroom day after day and often doing the same stuff over and over again,” she said.
Lizzi also called attention to a disparity in student involvement in field trips. He said higher-level courses take students on trips more often, leaving students that aren’t enrolled in more rigorous classes without opportunities to take trips. While he acknowledged the current data may be incomplete because the year hasn’t ended, it is still an important thing to consider as field trips are planned. Lizzi said teachers and administrators are looking to improve inclusivity. “There was total agreement that opportunities need to be available for everyone in the student body, not just certain classes or groups,” Lizzi said.
But field trips can have negative consequences too, especially three back-to-back trips. For Ireland, the impacts vary from class to class. “I’ve had incidents where teachers have told me field trips aren’t any excuse for not being ready to take a test or be behind and that it is solely our responsibility to keep up in class while on these field trips,” Ireland said. This has made her feel discouraged and not supported by certain teachers, turning what is supposed to be a class enhancing experience into a stressful one.
Lizzi gave a teacher’s point of view. “As a teacher, students being taken out of classes for field trips can be really frustrating,” Lizzia said. “I think that we have to work to improve. It’s not that it’s happening, it’s being unaware that these trips are taking place or that they’re coming up at the last second.” This problem is exacerbated because field-tripping students also have many other classes together, so one trip can disrupt an entire day’s worth of learning.
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Students, teachers debate best order for advanced placement english courses
Ibby Sadeh
Jun 10, 2026
A decision last year to allow for flexibility in the order that students take two advanced placement English classes has prompted debates among students about the benefits of completing the courses out of order.
Starting last school year, HVRHS allowed AP students to choose their own path in the order that they took English classes.
This means students could pick between AP Literature and Composition or AP Language and Composition first. In the years before that, language was the path for Juniors, and literature for Seniors. At the end of Sophomore year, students talked to their English teacher about which class they were recommended to take first.
A majority of students opted to take Language in their Junior year, but a small group broke with tradition and enrolled in Literature. Last year’s Literature class was made up of mostly Seniors and these few Juniors, but this year’s Literature class is just Seniors, with the few who took Literature last year taking Language now with mostly Juniors.
The decision to let students take it in either order was mostly to help scheduling. Lori Bucco, who teaches AP Language, said providing more options meant juniors could still take an AP English class even if the Language course conflicted with another desired course.
“The problem, and the reason we started to negotiate it in this building, is that we’re such a small school,” Bucco said. “If a kid wanted to take French 4, or Spanish 4, or ECE Environmental, and it bumped up against my class, then that put them into the honors English class when, if they could take AP Lit, they would.”
Damon Osora, who teaches AP Literature, explained the difference between the two courses. He said AP Language is centered around rhetoric and the use of language for persuasion, while AP Literature is meant to focus on subtext and teaching students to read between the lines to figure out what the author really means. The differences in the classes means different skills have to be put to work.
He also said that the English faculty at the school try to consider a students’ strengths as they rise into their junior year. “Ms. Freese’s philosophy has been to build on the demonstrated strengths at the end of sophomore year,” Osora said. This contributes to an easier pathway for sophomores into junior year, and into their first AP English class. The hope is these students would have more confidence going into the second AP English class.
For senior Mollie Ford, who opted to take AP Literature first, “I think that it was worth it being in Lit as a junior, because it was more of the English that I liked to do, and because it was my junior year, I really wanted to make sure that I could get good grades in my classes, so that when I sent my transcripts into colleges, it looked better,” Ford said. The class where she had stronger skills to be successful is not only important because of transition, but because of the significance of junior year.
“Lang, for some people, it’s an easier class because you are reading large books, but I think that I would have struggled last year in that class, so I am thankful that I took AP Lit,” said Ford.
Alexa Meach, senior, had a different perspective which both Lori Bucco and Damon Osora agree with.
“Ms. Freese actually put me into Lit, but after talking to some of my teachers, I thought it would be better to be with peers that were of my own age, because I think that I learn better that way. I think that it was the right choice because just being with people that I knew and that I had previous classes with in my high school experience helped a lot.”
The decision does have some social aspects to it. Bucco says, “It’s a lot about social grouping, kids want to be where their friends are. So if all your friends have been recommended to go into AP Lang, but Ms. Freese is talking to an individual saying, “you would do well in AP Lit,” you suddenly are gonna leave your, like, camaraderie, this group that you’ve, and take that class on your own, which could be really good for kids, but it’s also very intimidating.” Students are afraid or not willing to stray from their friends even if the other class would be better for them.
Additionally, Osora said that students who took AP Lit last year as juniors were more independent and comfortable in themselves in order to be taking a class of mostly seniors.
For the actual AP test itself, Bucco will let her kids know the format, she said. When talking about AP Lang, Meach said, “we got to go through the structure of the test, and as somebody with test anxiety, having a lot riding on one assessment, I liked having the time to go through step by step, which you get a little bit with Mr. Osora, but not as much because that’s not how his course was designed.”
With this being one of the first AP tests that many students take it can be stressful. Having a teacher that will review even just the design of the test can help students feel more prepared. Since this is such a small school, having the conversation with the teachers is possible and was helpful for many. For AP Lit this year, “I think that we were prepared for the test, but I think that I was prepared mainly because I had the background of taking it already, and so I knew the outline and layout much beforehand,” said Meach.
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A firsthand account of the dangerous ‘Senior Splashin’
Peter Austin
Jun 10, 2026
Hannah Johnson, left, and Christopher Crane show off their water guns.
Provided
Housatonic Valley Regional High School seniors challenged each other to a ruthless battle involving water guns, sneak attacks and frienship-threatening double-crosses called “Senior Splashin.”
The competition pitted seniors against each other in a free-for-all where “assassins” were assigned “targets” that they had to hunt across Region One and try to squirt with water.
The following is a first-person account of the events on the watery battlefield.
Monday, April 27
Senior Splashin starts at five o’clock today. I’m safe on school property but as soon as I leave track practice I’m in danger. At five o’clock today, I will receive a target, and I will need to hunt them down. Living in Kent gives me an advantage, since it’s unlikely that somebody will drive that far, but I still need to watch out.
Friday, May 1
I’m writing from the couch at my friends house–I just watched Chloe get Burke. I was telling him all night to keep his goggles on, but he didn’t listen, and Chloe took her opportunity. My goggles are still on, so for now I’m safe. Cole was the first person out; Hannah got him leaving our track meet on the second day. Some other people as well. After seeing Chloe ruthlessly eliminate Burke, there’s no way I’m taking off my goggles.
Monday, May 4
Seven people were eliminated this week, 35 of us are left. The days are long, and the nights are dangerous. It seems like everybody is hunting, or nobody is. You never know who’s out to get you, so you have to trust your friends if you decide to pair up. Checking your target’s location isn’t always reliable, so intel from others is valuable. Know where they live, where they work, where to hang around, and you might just have a chance to take them out.
I wasn’t able to eliminate my target. They were sneaky, and careful, always wearing goggles, never letting their guard down. But that’s just the first week, and I’ll receive a new target today. There was no penalty for my failure, but I need to get my target this week or I’ll be out.
Sunday, May 8
This weekend was a bloodbath; nine people were eliminated over the course of three days. There was a purge on Friday, where nobody was safe regardless of goggles or targets, which resulted in many fatal splashes. I tried to help my friend get his target on Thursday–while we didn’t succeed, it meant she let her guard down and my friend was able to get her out at the purge the next day. I had a plan to get my target yesterday, but I didn’t even need to since somebody else got him during the purge. Next week, I might not get so lucky.
Tuesday, May 12
I was hiding in the bushes when I heard the car door open. I ran out but my target saw me, and quickly got back inside the car before I could get him. My friend, who’d dropped me off a few houses down came to investigate. After explaining my failure, I thought about a new course of action–my target was trapped in his car, and I’d wait all night if I had to. Just then, I felt a splash of water on my neck.
Startled from my thoughts, I turned my head to see a green plastic water gun, a phone recording, and my best friend of many years behind it. ‘No,’ I said as the sun set behind the mountains. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, but it was too late. I was out, in front of the water gun I had given my friend just weeks earlier. To be betrayed is first to be trusted.
Monday, May 18
Although I’ve been eliminated, the game still plays on. On Saturday, I was the only one of only two who’d been eliminated, so the moderators called a second, surprise purge on Sunday. Two people were eliminated, and a total of eight people moved on to the next round. The track season is over, the baseball season is in full swing, and the game has never been more intense.
Monday, May 25,
As of today, five people remain.
In a terrible twist of fate, my former target Dev, who my friend Abram tried to help me get before splashing me in the back, returned the gesture by getting Abram after the Battle of the Bands.
Another shocking assassination came from a nail appointment turned setup, where Liv viciously eliminated Celeste; she didn’t even offer the dignity of a true water gun, and Celeste’s run ended in the face of a hair spray bottle. The last kill came from Hannah when she splashed down Joey from the trunk of his car, although he bought back into this round.
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Housy students bring young group to local ‘No Kings’ protests
Mia Dirocco & Ibby Sadeh
Jun 10, 2026
On March 28, dozens of Housatonic students gathered to join the No Kings Protest at The White Hart in Salisbury. It was a windy and cold Saturday morning, but students joined together nonetheless. Months later, Housatonic is still feeling its lasting impact.
For participant Eliana Lang, Sophomore, this was her first No Kings Protest experience. “I decided to go because it was really local to me, and I think it’s really important for people, especially young people, to voice their opinions and beliefs and stand up for what they believe in,” she said. “I would definitely go again, I think it was really important for us all to show up, and show what people from different generations think about these issues, and how they respond in times of need,” said Lang.
The Housatonic students present were called on stage for recognition. The speaker that day acknowledged how grateful the organizers were to have young people in attendance. Throughout the morning, the students recall being approached by fellow protesters who were excited to see younger faces in the crowd.
“It is helpful to show that these problems are affecting everyone and everybody no matter what age cares about them. People want to help no matter what age they are,” said Lang. “In a small town area, a gathering like this is harder to come by, but that should not mean that people should not have access.” Youth participation in rural areas is dwindling, but the students in attendance believe in its necessity.
The median age of No Kings protesters is 48 years old, and polls indicate that people aged 18-29 make up approximately 8% of rallies nationwide. Youth participation since the first wave of protests has been a consistent struggle even in large cities, and in rural communities, some have no student participation at all. However the students who participated in Salisbury were active in promoting participation on social media and encouraging other students to join. “I hope it encourages other people to do things in the future,” said Paul Losh, Sophomore. The protest at the White Hart was his first protest as well, but he remarked that he plans to continue participating in the future.
“I think spreading the worry is really important, just inviting people to come and support the cause,” said Losh. While there are no immediate plans for the future, it’s likely that the next local No Kings Rally will have many familiar student faces present.
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Envirothon team celebrates 24 years at Housy
Shanaya Duprey
Jun 10, 2026
File photo
One of the many extracurricular offerings at Housatonic Valley Regional High School is Envirothon, a unique competition that challenges students to explore and learn about environmental conservation.
The team, which originally formed at HVRHS in 2002, is headed up by David Moran. “Envirothon is North America’s largest Environmental competition for high school students,” Moran said.
The competition consists of two parts — an in-the-field competition and a presentation — covering five key topics. Every year, students have to research and present on soils and land use, forestry, aquatics, wildlife biology and a changing “current issue.” This year’s current issue focuses “non-point source pollution,” Moran said, which means pollution that can’t be traced back to a single particular source such as rain runoff washing pollutants into a watershed.
On paper, it’s an annual competition and display of knowledge and teamwork, but for Owen Schnepf, an Envirothon team member, it’s much more. “To me, Envirothon is much more than that one day in May,” Schnepf said. “It is really the season, the entire year that leads up to the competition. This is when we really build teams and learn.”
Housy’s Envirothon team started in 2002, but the competition as a whole has been around for far longer. Moran explained the competition was founded in 1979 in Pennsylvania and originally known as the “Environmental Olympics.” “It was designed as a hands-on, outdoor competition for high school students to test their knowledge of natural resources,” Moran said.
Since its start 24 years ago, the HVRHS Envirothon team has seen consistent success. “In our 24 year history our teams have placed in the top three state teams consistently,” Moran said. “We have won the state event 10 different times, and so competed at North American’s those 10 times. We have won the North American competition against 50+ other teams in 2007, and been in the top 10 on several occasions.”
The Envirothon consists of the two separate parts — an in-the-field component and an indoor presentation. “The works of Emerson, Thoreau, Pinchot, Roosevelt, Leopold, and Carson are all threads in the fabric of our work,” Moran said.
Students work through the year to build an understanding of the five topics. A notable part of the competition, and what Schnepf finds to be the biggest challenge, is the “current issue.” “When we first find out about the current issue topic — usually in the wintertime — we begin with rigorous research,” Schnepf said. “Once we have developed a plan of action, we have to make the slideshow to present to judges. As a team, we prepare to present and answer questions. Every year, we present at FFA Open House, the week before we finally have to do it in front of the judges at the competition”
To prepare for such an event, the Envirothon team is immersed in the world of natural resources and conservation year round. “Teams of five students compete after a year of study in the environmental field, along with workshops led by biologists, technicians, and industry professionals,” Moran said. Schnepf elaborated, saying “This year, Mr. Moran began with what he called ‘inspiration meetings.’ This is when we drove around our area to talk to professionals in the environmental field. So far this year, we have met with professional foresters, environmental analysts, environmental photographers, and land board committee members.”
Schnepf continued with details of the team’s year-long journey. “In the winter time, we begin diving into the material for four of the categories: wildlife, forestry, soils, and aquatics. This is when we nerd out with water testing kits, soil testing kits, animal pelts, tree samples, GPS devices, and so many more gadgets … In the final couple of months of the season, we double down on the current issue.”
In order to learn such a vast amount of material, many may assume that team members are delegated to specific positions. But Schnepf said there is no division of labor.
“There are no formal roles in Envirothon, such as a team captain,” Schnepf said. “People naturally take on responsibilities. Within the first few meetings, you can usually see someone who is leading the group in the right direction. For example, someone who is very good at identifying birds will take charge of the wildlife portion, while someone else who works in a logging business will focus on the forestry.” For such a group dynamic to work, teamwork is an integral part of Envirothon. Schnepf emphasized the necessity of cooperation. “Envirothon is very much comparable to a team sport like volleyball or soccer, where everything depends on how we work together,” he said. “On the competition day, the only way to win is to put our heads together.”
The teamwork building skills are not the only valuable aspect of being a part of the HVRHS Envirothon team, Moran said. “The importance of Envirothon is in developing a life-long land ethic and to develop stewardship practices. In the short term, teamwork, knowledge, fun, scholarships, resume builders,” he said. This is shared by the student team members as well.
Becoming a part of Envirothon does not require much more than a desire to participate. Despite its similar philosophy to Housy’s FFA program, involvement in the FFA program is not necessary to join Envirothon. “There have been many successful Envirothon team members over the past 24 years that were not FFA Members,” Moran said. “The two are not always tied together, but sometimes they are.”
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