Whittall Open House 1

5 December 2021Lucca P, Whittall ‘22; Photo by Jason C, Privett '24

Although we may be infamous for being a bit bullish, the lads of Whittall House were proud to welcome the school for our annual Open House. This is a night on campus where the whole school is invited to one house to enjoy music, friends and some pizza, while having the opportunity to glance around and see another house. For our night, we wanted a theme that would knock our predecessors’ nights out of the park; so we thought big. We thought, Hollywood!

The video introducing our theme aired at Thursday’s assembly – which happened to be the Thursday the day after we got back from break. On the Wednesday of that week, we Whittall boys were scrambling to put something together. We sought excellence, which wasn’t easy to do considering we were going to film on three different Iphones and a drone – that ended up flying into the crisp, clear waters of the Pacific. We filmed a few scenes recognizable to the school audience: Step Brothers and Outer Banks.

The night we had envisioned was set out to be one for the books. The Grade 12s in the house were responsible for setting up. Everything was going as planned – until we realized that after we came back from break, we would only have one day to film our video and set up (and this was the night before break started). We had contacted a photographer, we got our tent and DJ area set up outside, ordered pizza, decorations and a red carpet. Things were shaping up alright but our hopes of a memorable night were slowly fading.

We quickly realized that Picasso or Da Vinci didn’t achieve success in one night – or in one night before break and one night after break – they achieved success because they put tons of time into their crafts. We didn’t put much preparation time into our masterpiece, so it wasn’t really a masterpiece after all. Owen S, Whittall ‘22 was still “pleased with the video” and he thought that “It was fun to film something for the school to view.”

Students showed up promptly at 8:00 p.m and stayed till 10:00 p.m. Grade 11 Whittall boys were in charge of making sure people got in and out of the house; 10s were in charge of pizza, and the 9s and 8s were inevitably put on clean-up duty. Santiago E, Whittall ‘22 was thrilled with “the number of people that showed up” saying that it was “the most we have ever had in Whittall for Open House.”

The turnout was excellent and our Houseparents, Mr Gage and Ms Rogers, were happy with the night. Being almost a third of the way through the year, there are still several open houses to enjoy.

Lucca P, Whittall ‘22

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