Secret Admirer’s Day is an event organized by Westford Academy’s Student Council (STUCO) during which students can celebrate Valentine’s Day by purchasing items and having them sent to people they care about. These items include sweets and stuffed animals and will be delivered by STUCO members to a person of the secret admirer’s choosing during first block on Tuesday, Feb. 14.

Students were able to purchase items from Jan. 30 to Feb. 3 in the cafeteria during lunch. The items included chocolate roses (one for $5 and three for $10), Fun Dip (50¢), lollipops (50¢), a small plush ($5), and a plush and candy ($6). Students then wrote the name of the person they wanted to send the gift to and the name of the person who the gift was from on a slip of paper provided by student council members.

To execute Secret Admirer’s Day, a committee was set up within WA’s student council for the planning of the event. Committee members held meetings beginning in January and up until the week before the event to prepare. A final meeting was held a week before the event began to go over the sale of the items and address any questions members may have had.

Senior and STUCO member Rory Li was the head of the Secret Admirer’s Day committee and spearheaded much of the planning with her co-chairs, sophomores Navya Balineni and Rachel Haley.

“Putting this event together includes a ton of careful scheduling, advertising, store-calling, spreadsheet-making, and more,” Li said. “There are a lot of small details to think about and a lot of decisions to make, but my two wonderful co-chairs are so helpful and make the process so much easier.”

The committee also assigned jobs to other members of STUCO and created schedules which determined who would be selling the items during lunch. STUCO members were able to sign up for shifts in the cafeteria to sell the items by placing their names on a document created by Li.

“[Li] is our head for this specific event so she kind of set [schedules for] us and then we kind of took charge after,” senior and STUCO’s head of Marketing and Publicity Emma McCuin said.

Although people often think of Valentine’s Day as a romantic holiday, students at WA take the role of “secret admirers” for a variety of reasons. While some students do purchase items for their partner or crush, many students purchase items to send to friends as a way of showing appreciation.

“I think it’s a great way to spread love around the WA community by giving some nice goodies to other friends or even your partners in classrooms or group projects,” junior Srunu Bhagavathula said.

Secret Admirer’s Day has become a tradition of WA’s with the event being held annually for 25 years now. Due to COVID, some changes were made to the event in past years. In 2021, students had a set time where they were able to pick up gifts from secret admirers but things have largely gone back to normal since then. Inflation, however, played a big role in the planning  of the event this year with the rising prices on all goods.

“Typically this is a huge event for us, where a lot of people buy a lot of stuff,” senior and STUCO president Meghna Kumar said. “We try to keep a lot of the stuff the same but we also have to make somewhat of a profit. Generally, [prices] have risen a little bit.”

Even with inflation, the cost of items has remained fairly low and the change in prices has gone unnoticed by many students.

“Usually, when you go to the supermarket, you see [Fun Dip] listed as 75¢, which is like 25¢ more expensive [than the Fun Dip sold for Secret Admirer’s Day],” Bhagavathula said. “I would definitely say that Student Council did a very good job with the prices.”

Although both inflation and the pandemic have changed the way STUCO organizes and executes their events, their goals have still stayed the same.

“Receiving a treat from a friend or secret admirer first thing in the morning can really make someone’s day, and being able to create those moments of happiness in this community makes all the difference,” Li said.