Kicking off the house competitions, the annual stained glass window challenge is in full swing. This past Wednesday, the families within each house began their work on the stained glass windows.

This year, the house system is putting focus on the pillar of community. Each house is assigned a different aspect of the community within St. Dominic. During their annual retreat, the heads of house picked which aspect they would be portraying.

The house of Virtus will use the clubs of St. Dominic as the inspiration for their window. Temperantia will be portraying the St. Dominic students’ faith lives in theirs. Dignitas has sports, Caritas has performing arts, Gratia: special events, and Gaudium: the house system. With every aspect of the community represented, the stained glass windows are sure to be beautiful. The only question now is who will win.

The competition is judged with a rubric. They are graded on effort, creativity, theme accuracy, aesthetics, and timeliness. The judges will be made up of a committee of maintenance and staff equally representing their house, so as not to be biased, along with members of administration that are not affiliated with any one house.

To get full credit the windows must be unique, colorful, detailed, and prove to have serious thought behind the design. They should be innovative and different from all other stained glass windows seen in previous years. The making of the window must be led by students without teacher involvement. The winning house should have as many students involved as possible. Their widow should be clean, neat, and aesthetically pleasing to look at. Of course, the designers must stay on theme, and most importantly, the windows must be ready to be presented by the due date.

The creative captains should be taking the reins on this assignment, and teachers are supposed to have very little involvement. Creativity is very important in this competition and all students who want to get involved are encouraged to help out. Any student with a talent in artistic execution or innovative thinking would be a great help to their house if they were to offer their abilities.

Ideally, every family would make a small part of their house’s stained glass window, so that way they could piece them all together as a sort of metaphor for community. Every student contributes to a family and the families make up their house. Then, when all houses come together there will be a complete collection of stained glass windows, perfectly symbolizing the St. Dominic community.

The windows are made of Mylar, a kind of plastic, and are colored with markers to make the intricate designs. Each window should have eight pieces, one for each family and an extra piece to make together.

The families began working on designing their windows this past Wednesday, and they must be finished and hung by 9:45 on Monday, September 16th. Last year, Gratia took the win for this competition, but nothing has been set in stone yet. Every house still has a chance to take an early lead.