With the roar of cheers in the stands, Origami Club president Sunny Park (11), vice president Serena Lee (11), and secretary Julia Cheon (11) lifted paper crane leis onto each senior on the boys volleyball team, April 29. With a dip of the head, each accepted the necklace of black and gold paper cranes before running through the rows of cheerleaders and under a balloon arch. The Origami Club executives stood proud by the line of players, watching and clapping for the seniors celebrating their final regular-season game at Westview.
The Origami Club has been working on making leis, Hawaiian necklaces typically made of flowers to show love and honor, by substituting origami paper cranes for flowers. Being raised in Hawaii, Lee said she valued being able to share her past with others through the leis. In addition to boys volleyball seniors, the club is also gifting leis to softball, badminton, and orchestra seniors on their senior nights.
“[Park] and I know that origami usually starts with the crane, and the crane is a symbol of fortune, community and friendship,” Lee said. “Those are some values that we want to impart to the seniors. We want to implement a tradition of celebration at the school, and we thought the best way to start would be through celebrating the seniors at their senior nights by giving them leis. This was also my chance to have a part of my own history with me, because I grew up in Hawaii, where leis have always been used for celebration.”
After the boys volleyball senior night, the first senior night at which the Origami Club gave out leis, Park said she was proud to see the fruits of her labor.
“I was getting very nervous about it in the moments before, but when it happened, I felt the excitement that the players had,” she said. “They were super hyped, and I felt like I could share that moment with them. It was so rewarding to see our work pay off.”
Park said her love of origami was sparked when she was five years old and has persisted ever since.
“All I could make was a fortune teller [at first], but origami was super fun, so I kept doing it for my entire life,” she said. “It started with fortune tellers, then I tried new things. My mom got me interested in origami. I always asked her to help me because she was good at origami, and now I teach other people [through Origami Club]; it’s come full circle.”
According to Lee, Origami Club seeks to spread origami through Westview and through it, form community through origami, and she wants to spread origami across Westview.
“The goal of the club is to share origami with the student body,” she said. “We want to be friendly to everybody who comes to the club and give them an opportunity to be introduced to origami. We want them to not feel the pressure of having to meet more advanced origami standards, so we’re a beginner-level club right now. Later, to grow as a club, we plan to try to learn more advanced techniques, such as Sonobe origami.”
Park said an additional purpose of Origami Club is to give students a space to relax.
“One of the best benefits of origami is that it relieves stress,” she said. “At Westview, everyone’s always stressed, so I wanted it to be a safe haven for people to de-stress and just do something to take their mind off of working. Other than that, I wanted to create a community where everyone can learn origami and have the opportunity to grow together. Not enough people know how to do [origami] or can actually make these crafts, so I wanted to create a community where everyone can learn and grow together. I really like that we have people who come to every meeting and are interested in origami now.”
The executives of Origami Club worked for more than 50 hours on the project. Early on, they learned how to make a crane in only two minutes, which quickly became useful as they made the hundreds of cranes necessary for the leis, with each lei requiring 28 cranes.
“We met over Wolverine Times, during lunch, after school, in club meetings, and even over the spring break to assemble these leis,” Lee said. “To make a lei, we make the cranes, pierce holes through them, and string them with the fishing line [alternating between] black and yellow. It’s been a tough process, but we got a lot done.”
Lee said that the Origami Club has continued making the leis and enjoying it even in the face of the rapidly approaching AP exams and SAT.
“I thought taking on this project would overwhelm me and take up time that I could use to study,” Lee said. “What it actually did was give me a reprieve and a place to breathe. I found it very relaxing just to sit with my friends and fold cranes together. It gives us a chance to talk to each other and bond deeper, and in this way, I feel like our mission to make a gift for the seniors has also turned into a gift for ourselves.”
