Every year the seniors in student government plan a senior gift; something to make the school a better place and for seniors to attempt to leave their mark. In years past it has been murals like the one in the gym depicting our signature puma head or the one above the stairs in the C building of the school crest.

The name ‘senior gift’ may give the impression that the senior class as a whole takes part in the planning of the gift, but this is not the case.

Senior STUGO president Olivia Thompson explains, “All the seniors of student government come and sit down and then we use the help of Ms. Martino and Nancy Martino-Mr. Ames secretary, Mr. Ames himself, a little bit of Ms. Wilkinson..”

This year after the approval of principal Dan Serrano STUGO has decided on something that will be an addition to the courtyard, not wall decorum. Thompson states, “It’s going to be a statue of a puma.”

The statue is of a puma crawling down on rocks, there will however not only be one statue, but two.

STUGO pays for the senior gift through the student activities account. “Each year we allocate a certain amount of money for the senior gift,” says Thompson.

According to STUGO adviser Lerina Johnson, this year they had $3000 to spend on the gift. The purchase of the two pumas ending up being $2468.

“I wish we [were] more involved in picking it out,” senior Maddie Kowalski said. “I would have paid a little bit for it if I had known about it.”

They came up with idea of the statues when seeing that Basha had a statue of a bear in their courtyard. Sadly, the class of 2016 will not be able to see this new addition to the school unless they come back and visit.

Thompson states that “the statues are actually going to be drilled like bolted into the ground so that will happen over summer versus during the school year.”

As the two puma statues will stand strong forever on perry grounds so will the memories of the class of 2016.