The ABC 7 news channel made an appearance bright and early at Niles West on Friday, Sept. 1. Beginning at 5 a.m., students were encouraged to come to school to participate in the ABC 7 Friday Flyover. The flyover is a weekly event, primarily during the football season, where school communities make different group formations on the football field. Covered by the ABC news channel, the event is an opportunity for high schools to showcase their school spirit. Every year, the ABC channel chooses the school they feel channeled the most enthusiasm and gifts the winning school a massive trophy.

However, although the main event on Sept. 1 was the flyover, there was another event being publicized: the senior sunrise. It was communicated to the students through the administration and emphasized through dozens of flyers around the school that beginning at 5 a.m., the seniors would gather for the senior sunrise, which would then be followed by the flyover 45 minutes later.

Many of the students who showed up for the flyover were in fact seniors, but they didn’t seem too pleased with the structure of last Friday’s event. Specifically, many seniors weren’t happy with the senior sunrise portion of Friday, but claimed the flyover was fun.

“I think the flyover was a really fun experience and the DJ and energy were all really good, however, the senior sunrise itself could have been more enjoyable if it was directed towards just seniors,” senior Jeslyn Varghese said.

Another belief was that although there was breakfast provided by principal Jeremy Christian, the event itself turned out to be boring to some seniors, who were expecting more out of their senior sunrise.

“I think it was fun, however, I think there was too much of an emphasis on the flyover and it was less of a senior sunrise. Plus, the flyover got boring after some time,” senior Vince Pappas said.

An extremely common belief among this year’s graduating class members seems to be that the Senior Sunrise didn’t really cater to the seniors at all.

“The senior sunrise barely happened and there were too many sophomores and juniors… it wasn’t really a ‘senior sunrise’ to be honest,” senior Joshua Reginold said.

Even though there were senior sunrise t-shirts, the way to acquire them was through filling out a Google form. One of the questions for this form was asking for the student’s grade, listing all four grades as options. Seniors were concerned that any student, regardless of their grade, could’ve easily lied and said they were a senior, or if they weren’t a senior, put their real grade and still gotten a senior sunrise t-shirt.

Other seniors felt that there was no real plan for the sunrise, but rather the organizers merely added the sunrise portion to the flyover as an incentive to attract more students and have them attend the event.

“I was kind of annoyed by the fact that it was titled ‘senior sunrise’ when in reality they only labeled it that to get seniors to come to the flyover. It wasn’t a senior event and it wasn’t focused on us at all. It was still fun but I wish they wouldn’t have promoted it as a senior sunrise when it wasn’t,” senior Areej Ibrahim said.