As TWHS students and the school regain a sense of normalcy post-construction, the idea of bringing back old traditions has taken off with this year’s revival of the Halloween Miss America Senior group costume. Typically, one senior girl reaches out to have 49 other senior girls each volunteer to dress as one of the 50 states. The idea then gets passed along until every state is represented by a student. The girls dress as something that relates to the state they have chosen. For example, whoever represents Ohio may choose to dress as a Buckeye.
This tradition initially died after Covid, yet this year senior Hadley Trueman has made a push to bring it back.
“My sister was a 2020 graduate from TWHS which was the last senior class to do it, and a few weeks ago I was at a senior student council meeting talking about senior gifts and senior traditions and it made me think of it,” said Trueman.
Shortly after the meeting another senior student council member, Jessica O’Leary, mentioned to Trueman that she should orchestrate a plan to bring it back for the class of 2025 girls.
When it came to organizing this event, Trueman turned to her sister for advice.
“I talked to my sister first about what the planning was like during her year,” Trueman said. “She said it was absolute chaos because the person who organized it made a group chat with 200 senior girls with only 50 state slots.”
After this conversation, Trueman definitely knew what to avoid when designing her proposal.
“The whole fiasco with the Class of 2020 girls was that people were stealing each other’s states, so I had to come up with a way that would be controlled and that whoever wanted to participate could, and have the state they wanted,” explains Trueman.
Trueman first crafted a general message to send to a bunch of senior girls, as well as an example picture, which happened to be the costumes organized by the class of 2020. She also shared the link to the Google sheet she created, which had three columns. The first section with the names of the participating seniors, the second with the state they were dressing up as, and the third with the list of the available states that were left.
Senior girls were asked in various ways if they wanted to participate. Some girls were directly contacted by Trueman and others were asked by people passing the information around.
“I was asked to join by my friend,” said senior Serenity Satarkhet. “At first I thought it was random but then I decided it could be fun.”
Once the word was out, all the slots were filled within the next 48 hours.
Since each girl who was participating got to decide which state they wanted to dress as, most took it as a chance to honor something special in their lives, or just something they love.
“I chose Illinois because I was born in Chicago and my parents met there,” said senior Taylor Charnes. “I wore a cubs jersey and a hat.”
A few days before Halloween, Trueman also made a group chat with all of the girls taking part in the tradition on Snapchat so that she could discuss further details about a group photo on Halloween. This photo ended up taking place at the end of 7th period, near the new main entrance of the building.
“I felt like it was a great way to unite a lot of the senior class girls. Everyone that was involved were either friends or knew of each other, and it made me happy to see people together that would never normally take pictures together,” said Trueman
Many of the senior girls hope to inspire and pass this tradition on to the class of 2026 and continue to build community for the years to come after them. #GirlPower
