As the sophomore-senior duo of the D.C. team finish celebrating their win, crowds of students drop their pom-poms and make their way out of the gym. Those who stay, however, don’t get the leisure of simply heading off to their next classes.

Members of Leadership and ASB remain in the gym for their regular post-rally clean up — as brunch ends, the clean up process is a rush to clear the gym for the next day.

“Each class is in charge of cleaning up their own side — any decs they put up or streamers they put up. They're in charge of taking care of that and putting it in the dumpster,” ASB President Juliane Tsai said. “It's basically just a process of throwing everything away.”

2020 Social Manager Dan Sachs explains how they make the clean up process more productive.

“In order to make the cleaning process as efficient as possible, we try to get everyone to help out,” Sachs said. “We pop balloons together and help each other out to do everything.”

The process typically follows: collecting and placing the pom-poms into their storage bins, taking down posters and streamers and putting them into the dumpster, popping all balloons, lifting up the large, black mats placed on the gym floor, moving back the bleachers and sweeping the gym floor.

For Tsai, the process of throwing away the handmade decorations and posters is saddening.

“It kind of sucks cause you’re like 'we worked so hard for this poster,’” Tsai said. “But we've gotten used to [just having to throw the poster out. Having them there] honestly just makes the environment of the rally a lot more spirited.”

Sachs agrees that it’s tough to throw out the rally posters that they worked really hard on. He explains how they like to keep parts to remember what they did throughout high school.

“We have really good artists who worked really hard on pieces and some of them just look amazing so we want to keep that,” Sachs said.

However, classes are allowed to, and do, keep a poster if they want to. For example, the junior class has a poster they enjoyed and has kept it in storage. Class of 2019 Vice President Anisha Sinha explains that the posters may eventually have another use.

“For senior all night party — we might use it then, or if seniors want to use it as a throwback in one of their future rallies, we keep it for them,” Sinha said.

Planning for the next rally won’t come immediately as Leadership comes back to class on Monday. For larger rallies like Homecoming, preparation comes up to three months in advance, while smaller rallies, like this one, have approximately one to two months of preparation time, starting with figuring out logistics such as theme and teams.

According to Sinha, despite the exhausting process that follows the rallies, it’s worth it in the end to see all the spirit the school has.

“Surprisingly, there's not that much backlash post-rally; it's usually during the rally when people are getting excited or a little bit heated,” Sinha said. “It never phases me how enthusiastic and spirited classes can be.”