Coming back to haunt Malden High school, candy grams made yet another celebrated reappearance as the Class of 2023 takes on the role of selling the grams again this year. For two dollars, any student could send any message, given that it was school-appropriate, to a friend or even themselves.
Recalling the excellent reception last year, Yearbook Advisor James Valente mentioned, “We were able to bring them in 2021 because of Mr. Lightbody’s help, so we kind of came up with the idea of bringing the old back and making it new again.” Since the school board was already on board with the idea of candy grams, there were fewer hoops to jump through this year, but Valente continued by saying, “We had to go through and make sure that everything that was on the candy grams wasn’t anything that was going to be a problem. We don’t want people being made fun of or bullied by hurtful messages. So we made sure that everyone was doing something that was nice and made a friendly message and that’s the only thing the principal asked us to do so we made sure of that.”
Saura Rathore, a senior and Class President of the class of 2023, remarked, “Everyone had the same role. Basically, during lunch, we would go around to every single table and ask them to buy candies, and then have them write notes.”
“We really broke it down by lunches and since mine were third and first lunch I would usually do third,” Andrew Louis mentioned.
Rathore explained how the candy grams were delivered saying “we delivered them to English classes because everyone has to take an English class for four years. So we basically went on Aspen and then we saw the person’s name and what English class they had, so we wrote the period and the room number, and then we found a way for us to give it to them in that period, and in that room.”
Valente wanted to encourage other classes to take part in candy grams next year since candy grams “is a good venture and the other classes should pick it up and take it on as something that they can make money with. I think it’s really fun to have it back and I think it’s something kids enjoy.”
Rathore wanted to acknowledge how hard her class worked. “I was very thankful for the job that they did and the help that they gave us because it was kind of stressful at some points. Because, you know, we need to find people to sell it and then convince people to actually buy the candies. So we had to do that quickly before Halloween.”
