After a storm comes a rainbow. For Archer that rainbow came in the form of Color Wars, which painted the campus red, purple and every shade in between.

On Monday, Feb. 13, students gathered to celebrate the second annual Color Wars. Color Wars is an event organized by Student Council as a school-wide activity between Winter Break in January and Spirit Week in March.

“The purpose of Color Wars is to unite each grade and to demonstrate school spirit,” junior Maya Winkler, a student council Executive Board member, said. “It’s a really great way to connect with people in your grade in a friendly competitive manner. I think that at Archer, we don’t have many opportunities for competition, so it’s important that we have this outlet for friendly competition.”

Each grade was assigned a different color, which they dressed in and decorated based on. Some grades kept the same color as the 2016 event, while other grades selected new colors.

“I was so happy to find out we were blue because I like the idea of tradition, and continuing the tradition from last year.” Halle Jacobs ’17 said. “I love the color blue too, so that’s a plus.”

“They rain was kind of a blessing,” Lucia Barker ’18, a class representative said. “I came up with the idea to incorporate the rain into our grade’s slogan.”

The juniors put their slogan to good use in the first competition: door decorating.

“We’re ‘The Queens of 2018’ and love using RE18N as one of our slogans,” Barker said. “We made our door theme “100% Chance of Re18n” because we’re going to reign the school next year.”

The junior class won first place with their design. Seniors placed second, and sophomores were third respectively.

“Decorating our door was really exciting,” Sidney Velasquez ’19 said. “I enjoyed bonding with my grade while listening to throwback music and making posters.”

Next, each grade and a teacher team competed in a relay race. Challenges in the race included a balloon toss and oreo eating challenge.

“It was really nice to hear everyone cheering and screaming for us,” Langdon Janos ’22, who participated in the relay race said. “We’re a pretty close grade, but it helped us get even closer.”

Eleventh grade won first, and tenth grade came in second.

Each team then competed in a bracket-style tug-of-war contest.

“It was hard to compete against the older grades, but we tried our best — which is what counts,” Nina Salomon ’22, a member of the seventh-grade tug-of-war team, said.

Faculty came in first, and ninth grade with a close second.

“I feel proud of my 2020 peers because we really put on a good fight and put all of our might into [tug-of-war],” Chloe Eshel ’20 said. “We’ll be ready to get first next year.”

Throughout the lunchtime event was a mural competition.

“Student Council got inspiration from the art gallery and we wanted to provide an opportunity for an artistic element,” Meg Shirk, Student Council Faculty Adviser, said.