After being hit with a silly string attack Monday at Brunch and suffering from internal disputes over its class theme, the sophomore class is trying to move forward and focus on performing its best in the remaining three days of Spirit Week.

“The junior boys for the second year in a row decided it would be fun to silly string us,” sophomore class vice president Owen Dulik said. “It was really annoying because people worked hard on their costumes and they  got messed up but they [the junior class] were punished for that.”

The official Associated Student Body score sheet shows that the junior class was marked off 25 points for poor sportsmanship. Had this not happened, they would have placed first at the end of Day One since they are currently in third, only 15 points behind the first-place seniors and 10 points behind the second-place sophomores.

“They don’t learn,” Dulik said. “It doesn’t matter though because we get more points and there’s a reason why you don’t silly string.”

With yellow silly string brushed off their costumes, hair  and backpacks, sophomore class members say they have also been resilient in dealing with intra-class disunity over their theme.

“Our themes were USSR and superheroes and Mario,” sophomore Catherine Davidson said. “By far superheroes won, but USSR came in second and … there was a fight about it on Facebook.”

Before the final votes came in, many pro-USSR posts and comments had been circulating on the Class of 2016 Facebook page.

A picture of Stalin’s sickle and hammer was posted with the caption “For the glory of Mother Russia, vote proudly comrades!” and received 49 likes. In playing with the USSR flavor, one person wrote, “And remember: if you don’t vote USSR, we will find you :)” —  receiving 15 likes.

In final theme votes, Superheroes received 132 votes, USSR 70 and Mario 29. The 70 USSR theme hopefuls did not accept without a fight.

“People were pretty upset when the USSR theme wasn’t chosen,” sophomore Bryn Carlson said. “Others were relieved because a float and a dance for USSR would have been pretty [crappy].”

Owen Dulik agreed that a USSR theme would have been difficult to work with, in terms of the costumes and float for the class, since it did not come from a very serious foundation.

“I think a lot of the people who were pushing for communism were … doing it from a more satirist point of view, where they thought it would be funny,” Dulik said. “But I think everyone really liked the theme that got chosen and how it was executed.”

With communism behind them and red clothing, teeny-bopper and Paly pride ahead, the sophomore class looks forward to maintaining its  second-place holding in Spirit Week. The points for Day Two will be released this evening after float building closes for the night.