(May 24, 2013) — A night filled with applause, cheers and smiles kicked off as soon as honorees, along with their families, began to arrive to Senior Awards Night on Wednesday evening. Achievements of all sorts ranging from academics to community service were rewarded. A dinner for attendees was prepared before the event. Brothers Errol Lopez and sophomore Larny Lopez both agreed that the food was great.

At first, most students were clueless as to what type of awards they would receive but some had a few ideas. Jenna El-Fakih did not know what the topics for the awards were. “I don’t even know what awards they’re giving out, so I have no idea what I’m going to win,” El-Fakih said.

Lopez had a slight idea of which awards he would receive. “I’ll probably just win the bilingual award, maybe a community service award, and maybe a teacher award. Regardless, it’s an honor to here,” Lopez said.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” Christina Davidian said, “I was the first person to get called for the entire thing so it was actually really exciting. I didn’t expect to go up that many times.” Davidian ended the night with 5 awards of recognition.

Davidian, along with a large group of other honorees won the Bilingual Competency Award. Awards for competency in Spanish, Armenian, Russian, and Tagalog were given. Others received the gold Bilingual Competency Award for achieving passing scores for two different languages. Arsen Pashayan and Adrine Oganyan won special achievements for receiving the highest scores on the Russian and Armenian test, respectively.

Others that wanted to support their family and friends came to the event as well. Even though Mirna Gadalla was not invited to receive an award, she still came to support her friends, and in particular, Jenna El-Fakih. Sophomore Larny Lopez attended to support his brother with his family. Lopez and his father both brought cameras to take pictures of the event. “I’m really proud of my brother, he’s the best,” Lopez said.

After each award was finished being rewarded, Principal Doug Dall allowed families to take a few moments to take pictures of those standing on stage. Honorees smiled widely as parents tried to focus their iPhone cameras to take photos of such outstanding achievements. An annual tradition also took place. ASB President Anna Baburyan received a gavel for recognition of the year’s hard work as a president.