Gallery • 64 Photos

Colton, CA—Friday night from 6 to 8 pm, ASB and CHS’s senior class put on this year’s annual Senior Sunset at Memorial Stadium to help wind down from the school year and celebrate the graduates’ farewell from high school.

The hangout event was planned by the seniors for the seniors. Most of the time was spent socializing, however towards the end of the evening, the seniors opened and read letters they wrote for themselves during the Senior Sunrise back in August and watched a video put together for them.

The video featured clips and videos submitted by the seniors themselves that were edited together in a compilation.

The seniors could clearly see the video display, but whether they could see the actual sunset was debatable. Actually it wasn’t debatable, no sunset was admired tonight.

The weather was not the typical Californian heat wave everyone’s used to in mid-May. It was cloudy, windy, and extremely chilly. A lot more blankets were brought and hoodies were worn.

All seniors took notice obviously, and so did ASB, the ones running the show.

“Well I mean . . . the weather. We’re not getting quite of a sunset but at least we have a movie,” ASB member Julia Romo said. “It’s nice and cold and cuddly weather.”

While the concern of rain was a thought amongst everyone on the field, ASB President Joseph Duran assured that if it really did rain, then it would definitely be the seniors last big splash, making the Sunset even more memorable.

Memories played a huge role in the event. Seniors either attended to reminisce, or make new ones. As the seniors opened their letters together from the Senior Sunrise, they got to do a little of both.

Some set goals for themselves, and achieved them like they wanted. Like Bianca Roman.

“I wrote about a letter to myself wishing me the best in college, and I wished myself also to not be scared of what comes next, and a lot of things I hoped for myself where I was back then and where I want to be now.”

The Sunset was great overall considering how the seniors felt about it. But the fun was almost killed by more than a few bumps in the road.

The Fat Guy Tacos food truck did not make it to the Sunset due to an unforeseen last minute outbreak amongst the staff. Whether or not the staff was infected with COVID is unclear, but it did keep them from attending the event.

Principal Abbott had to improvise and made a deal with Golden 5 Pizza and Wings across the street from the high school. They made 30 pizzas within 90 minutes in exchange for Colton swag, a thank you card, and obviously paying the bill.

Along with that, even though the Senior Sunset was supposed to be planned and set up by seniors, ASB had to unfortunately take the event into their hands when the senior class failed to plan or decorate accordingly.

“The senior class is in charge for planning the senior sunset. But the senior class fell behind with preparations,” next year’s ASB Vice President Juan Barron explained, “Ms. Burkirk had to go buy balloons this morning. Afterwards there was no senior banner set up, they didn’t make anything for today. So we were able to reuse a lot of the decorations from last year, plus contributions from the underclassmen.”

Even so, lots of seniors whether or not from ASB had satisfied looks on their faces spending time with their senior friends and reading their letters.

The Senior Sunset and Senior Sunrise plan on both being annual events with Buskirk around, and each generation of Seniors can look forward to both once it’s their turn to graduate from CHS.