It is no secret that our faculty and staff here at Westminster work really hard to keep the school running on a day to day basis. From directly teaching students to dealing with the bureaucracy and logistics of running an independent private institution, every job within the academy presents many challenges and difficulties of its own. However, even our beloved teachers and administrators need a chance to let loose every once in a while, and when they do, they do it in style.

This year, the administration decided to try a new type of event to allow the Westminster teachers and staff to come together as a community and relax: a mouse race. The event took place at Covenant Presbyterian Church and a personal friend of Tim Muehleisen, Westminster’s Head of Discipline, provided the mice as well as the track they ran on.

Ashley Woodall, the director of student life and the staff member who orchestrated the event provided some insight as to why Westminster decided to try this new form of faculty get-together:

“We came up with it in the fall. Mr. Muhheizen actually came to me and presented the idea because he knows somebody that runs a company because they used to go here, so we just decided to go for it. We’re so busy during the regular school day that we don’t get a chance to hang out very much and so it’s nice to get together and not be working and get to play together a little bit.”

While a mouse race may not be the way staff members at Westminster usually spend their Friday evenings, many found the novel experience quite thrilling. When asked about her personal experience at the mouse race, Karen Pollack, a college counselor at Westminster and attendee of the mouse race said:

“I thought it could be fun, but I really didn’t know if it would be fun or not, but I was like, hey, it’s gonna be fun just because it’s with fellow faculty members at Westminster, so it’ll be fun no matter what. Yeah, it was bizarre, but I had a great time.”

Furthermore, Pollack mentioned that the reasoning behind the mouse race was to be more inclusive to members of the faculty who felt left out by the traditional trivia nights:

“I was reading an article about it because I actually did look into it a little bit and they said one of the purposes of it is to give people a chance to gather and not have the pressure of a trivia night. Because if you don’t know trivia, you just feel kind of dumb, you know, like, you can’t really contribute or participate.”

In light of the joy this event brought to the WCA faculty, the WCA administration wants to put on more events like this for their staff members in the future. Woodall further elaborated on the Westminster’s desire to continue organizing events like the mouse race to provide staff members with a chance to get together as a community:

“I think there’s enough desire for us to get together and have fun, so our thought is we should try to do at least one thing a year. It may vary what that thing is, like we might go back to doing a trivia. I don’t know how many times you can do a mouse night without it getting too old, so we’ll probably look for other ways to do stuff too.”

Hopefully the WCA staff will get to unwind with fun, unique community events like this for years to come. Overall, it seems like those who attended the mouse race enjoyed the time they spent bonding with their colleagues and enjoying a unique and memorable experience.