Every year 12th grade students wear with pride a hoodie that represents their long journey together through school. The tradition of making a senior sweatshirt has come as no easy task for the graduating class of 2020. Not only have there been disagreements between committee members, but also with the students–a tough crowd to please.

Juniors have already started planning for their last year at The Columbus School. The student body is being surveyed about the design of the sweatshirt they will use next year, but a vast variety of preferences have made the process challenging and slow. Considering how demanding it is to oversee this process, it takes a lot of guts to take on a leadership position, but the students who did came face to face with companies that were willing to help. Although the process is advancing, the lack of flexibility and creativity is hindering it all.

“We made a page with all the designs we had, to ask everyone in the grade and so they could tell us what they thought. They really disliked them, so we are starting all over with our process,” Andrea Restrepo, committee member and 11th-grade student at TCS, said.

There are four volunteers on the team that is trying to originate ideas for the senior hoodie. Catalina Vélez, an 11th-grade student at TCS, was also a part of this group and helped decide which company to hire; companies Ducop and Cien Por Ciento offered multiple deals and great publicity, but ultimately the latter was chosen.

“When we chose Cien Por Ciento it was because they gave us the sweater for free, the only thing we had to pay was IVA. That was a really big advantage because there are a lot of expensive payments made during senior year,” Velez said.

However, finding an adequate company to produce the hoodies proved to be the easiest challenge to overcome; Catalina Velez dropped out of the committee because of the “stubbornness and indecision” of her mates which made it difficult to work.

“They were only showing the things they liked and not making general designs for everybody, and having enough options,” Vélez said.

It should be acknowledged how these students are working hard on finding something that the majority will be comfortable with. For now, there is no agreement regarding what the sweatshirt design of the 2020 seniors is going to be like.

“It’s actually a very complex process because opinions are really different for each person, so when we show a design many people won’t like it. We are never all going to agree,” Restrepo said.