Go about your normal day at Northwood. As you walk into the lunchroom, there is pop music playing in the background. All you see are rows of colorful tables. Somebody hands you a piece of paper with a number on it. You realize that today is not the day you will be sitting with your usual clique.
After you find the seat that corresponds to your number, you find yourself at a table with people you have never seen before. At this point, it doesn’t matter if you’re the shy kid or senior class president. In that moment, the people sitting at the table are all strangers. Everyone is just a face wanting to connect.
This experience was the goal Mix It Up, a social event hosted by Northwood’s Legacy on Monday, Feb. 13. The event was held during all lunch periods where students were randomly seated away from their usual cliques to socialize with randomly selected people. Students who participated were then given a red ticket that allowed them to leave their fourth period classes 10 minutes early to receive pizza in the courtyard.
During first lunch, there were a myriad of students who participated in the event. Senior Sara Kate Leviner enjoyed the activities that took place.
“[The activity runners] will ask you what applications on your phone you couldn’t live without and why and what would you do if you got a million dollars,” Leviner said. “They made it a fun way to break the ice and meet new people.”
There were other groups that each played a role in shaping the event. Chatham Drug Free, an organization designed to help prevent alcohol, tobacco and drug use among youth, provided funds for the pizza, DJ, photographer and decorations.
Students in Northwood Legacy, a club centered on fixing social issues in high school such as drugs, alcohol, etc., came up with the main event of Mix It Up. Club members set up tables, lead students to their seats, and handed out pizza during all lunches and after school. Legacy member Jacqueline Condrey said that one of her jobs is to “to go around and get people excited”.
The main goal of Mix It Up was to fix the problem of discrimination, according to Condrey. Adviser of Mix It Up and Northwood Legacy, Cari Christopherson, understands that this message may have been difficult to communicate.
“It’s hard to drive home the fact that discrimination is what we were looking at when really, when it came down to it, the main focus that we wanted was to hope that at least you talked to somebody you never would’ve talked to before,” Christopherson said. “I don’t know if people got the message of discrimination, but if anything, it got different people sitting together: different races, genders. It’s things like that where we may not have gotten to the whole mass, but we got to some. That’s what matters.”
Christopherson says the roots of Northwood Legacy resulted from events from the spring of 2016.
“Last year [there were] a couple deaths of those in our Northwood family. It is thought that definitely one of those was due to a drug overdose, so Chatham Drug Free came forward to look for kids wanting to make a difference,” Christopherson said. “Students began to sign up for that. They had their first meeting in the spring of last year. Our focus was to try and make Northwood better. One of the [ideas] that was brought up was that [club members] thought there was a problem with discrimination. Legacy was created as a result of that.”
Over half of students from each lunch hour participated in Mix It Up. Christopherson, who sees a bright future for the club, cannot guarantee when students will see Mix It Up in their lunches again.
“We’ll just have to find out next year,” Christopherson said. “When [Legacy] get a new pot of kids, who knows what issues they’ll want to work or focus on for the school.”
– By Chantal Shine
