With Palo Alto High School’s Spirit Week quickly approaching, Paly Associated Student Body hosted the Spirit Swap during lunch on Thursday to assist students in their scramble to gather spirit gear.

Sophomore vice president Leilani Chen pitched the idea.

“The goal behind the Spirit Swap was to create more equity among spirit week because it can get pretty expensive for students,” Chen said. “I wanted to make sure that everybody was able to have at least something for each day.”

With class spirit shirts priced at $15, senior jerseys costing $30, and all the gear needed for class colors — salad dressing, generations, and Paly pride — Spirit Week is sure to have students showing their pride.

According to senior inclusion/wellness commissioner Kaitlyn Gonzalez Arceo, “A lot of Paly students go to Spirit Halloween for the spirit costumes, so we wanted to relieve them of that pressure of spending a significant amount of money,” Arceo said.

According to Arceo, she loved the positivity and kindness that came through with the swap.

“Seeing kids from different grades come together [to] help each other out [saying] like, ‘Hey, this shirt would look good’, or ‘This orange tutu would look cute’, comes back to helping each other out and I think it’s awesome to see,”Arceo said.

Aside from this, the Spirit Swap struggled with receiving donations despite numerous Instagram posts on the Paly ASB account and Schoology updates from Student Activities Director Alyssa Bond promoting it.

“We didn’t get as many donations as we hoped, but maybe next year we can start the swap earlier and maybe some of the funding can go toward buying bandanas and small accessories for students,” Arceo said.

On top of this, looking ahead, Chen plans to emphasize the Spirit Swap by stating it’s environmental benefits.

“Initially, it was planned to create less waste and make it so that we could cycle through more things,” Chen said.