The Allderdice Senior Sunrise may have been sparsely attended, but the behind-the-scenes drama has garnered more attention. A few weeks before the event, an anonymous student approached student leader Zamorrie Reeves with a proposition on the first day of school. According to Zamorrie, the student contacted him and asked for help organizing a senior sunrise, something she had wanted to do since last year. He agreed, unaware of the drama that would ensue.
In Zamorrie’s words, “A lot of people disagreed. Student government was not a fan of it for whatever reason… there was some kind of animosity.” This is because the student government is charged with representing the students at Allderdice: planning events, organizing activities, and fundraising for dances. According to Sophia Hadi, student government secretary, the Senior Sunrise is one example of the events that the student government should be responsible for organizing. Regarding students taking action in these events, Sophia stated, “I just think there would really be no point in having a student government or having the entire election if people are just like making their own committees to do the things that student government is supposed to be doing.” She continued to explain, “And it’s fine if people want to do those things, but then it's like why are people going through all the work to run for these positions and like make the posters, make the videos, campaign to win the election, and then not be able to do anything with the position.”
There have been conflicting accounts on whether or not the student government was allowed to help. Senior president Nikhil Saxena said, “It was kind of sprung upon us, in a delayed fashion. We were not warned about it and had no time to prepare, plan for it, or promote it”. Zammorie reported on reaching out for help, but student government sources denied ever being reached out to or even being aware of the event until an Instagram post announced the 2024 Senior Sunrise. So what really happened?
The first point of communication between Zammorie and the student government happened around a week after he announced Senior Sunrise on his Instagram. Text receipts to the 2025 Student Government Instagram account show Zammorie messaging, “Good afternoon, may you post this event that has already been approved by our principal? Thank you.” He had attached the Senior Sunrise flier to the message. The communal response was as follows: “Hi Zammorie, as the student government, we feel as though we should have been contacted about this before it was publicly announced. Because of the quick turnaround, as there is only one week before the chosen date, we do not think we should be able to fulfill the hopes of the senior sunrise. As a result, we think that endorsing this event would look bad on us as we do not think the one-week time period would allow us to effectively create the event in which you are proposing. We would hope that in the future, you come to us with these types of events first so that we can plan it properly.”
Nikhil admitted, “I was the one who wrote the message and pressed send, but I did consult the rest of the senior class student council before sending it, and we all agreed on the message that was sent. I was speaking on behalf of the senior class student government.” That certainly seems to be the case, as all the interviews with student council members had a similar theme.
In Sophia’s words, “I just think it would have been nice to get a heads up to say ‘Hey, we’re planning this because it would normally be a responsibility of the student council. I think something like that, where something could go wrong or even if it was just canceled, we wouldn’t want the blame to be on us because most people would expect the student council to do it, just like a heads-up notification that they were planning it and wanted any input from us would have been nice.”
Nikhil added, “ We didn’t want to take credit for an event that was not what we wanted it to be. We didn’t want to put our names on that.”
Zammorie picked up on the “animosity” in the 2025 Student Government’s response but disagreed with the implication that he was wrong. Zammorie said, “I honestly can’t see their point of view. I honestly can’t. I don’t think I was wrong for what I did. Maybe there should have been a little more communication, but instead of taking things the way they took it, and saying that they could have planned it properly and saying that it was poorly planned which was not the case.” He continued to say, “they didn’t offer their assistance because they wanted to plan it in their own way.” He doubled down, saying, “I’m a student leader as well, so I didn’t think I needed another student leader’s approval to do something.” Zammorie maintained that the comment about the senior sunrise being “poorly planned” was “unnecessary” and that he would not have reacted in such a way if he were in their position.
In particular, Zammorie felt somewhat attacked by Senior Vice President Mikayla Sharif. Multiple sources including Zammorie, Mikayla, and Sophia, discussed an alleged group chat between Mikayla, Zammorie, and other involved parties. When asked about arguments between the two, Zammorie responded, “She didn’t take it in a way that I thought she would, but if I’m being real, we are all student leaders here. I don’t understand why if a student leader says they want to do something and gets approval from the principal…I honestly can’t tell you why she was mad.” Mikayla refused to comment on any specific disagreements, citing “communication issues” as the root of the Senior Sunrise dispute.
Nikhil got a bit more specific on the issues of the Senior Sunrise. He said, “We know Dr. McCoy approved it, so it was technically allowed, but we felt as though it was something we were hoping to do later on when the school year started and we could get the word out more because as we saw by the turnout, I don’t think it was too great.” The Senior President added, “I would say that I would have hoped the turnout would be better if I planned it.” He finished by saying, “We kind of hadn’t thought about making a senior sunrise on the first day of school because, for one, our school already starts early, and so we didn’t think that people would turn up on the first day of school even earlier after a long summer of sleeping in, and we were hoping to get the school year started and the ball rolling.”
Zammorie, not wanting to start the year off on a sour note, admitted that he could have communicated better. “Did I jump the gun? Yeah, I did, but we live and we learn right?” The student leader continued, “I don’t hold grudges; I’m not mad or anything.”
In the end, despite some unresolved feelings, the Senior Sunrise came and went without too much fanfare. Nothing went majorly wrong, no students were late to class, and no extreme measures were taken.
