Senior spreads joy with “Happy” video

Senior William Du poses in his Happy video. The video was emailed out to all students and faculty on Mar. 24 for the JC communitys enjoyment.

Senior William Du poses in his “Happy” video. The video was emailed out to all students and faculty on Mar. 24 for the JC community’s enjoyment.

Senior William Du posted his video “Happy–we are from JC” on YouTube on March 23. The video features 34 students and 21 teachers and faculty dancing to Pharrell William’s “Happy.”

“It’s like a love letter to John Carroll,” TV production and social studies teacher Bob Schick said. “He obviously loves going here.”

Du says he did it “just for fun because ‘Happy’ is a worldwide trend.” The project took three weeks to shoot and a few days to edit.

“He told me about it a couple weeks ago,” Spanish teacher Susan Garcia said. “It’s the cutest idea.”

“It’s not hard, and people just move their bodies,” Du said. “Why not?”

“I was very excited for the video itself, but I was a little hesitant to dance,” German teacher Ashleigh Stall said. Stall danced with religion teacher Elise Gower and appeared multiple times in the video.

“Mr. Johnson’s dance was the bomb,” junior Grace Richards said.

“I wish I could actually dance with the Pope,” junior Camille Smith said. Smith appeared with Campus Minister Patti Murphy-Dohn, junior Taylor Fitzgerald, and a cardboard cut-out of Pope Francis.

William Du

Du had the help of fellow senior Maha Khan on shooting and editing the video. According to Du, Khan was especially helpful in persuading people to dance.

“At first, I didn’t know how to do it and wing it, but just following [sophomore] Lilly Stannard and her dance moves, I knew what to do from there,” junior Juan Cajigas said.

“It’s very well done,” Schick said. “He shot it well, he edited it creatively, and if the purpose was to make you happy, he succeeded wildly.”

Kathy Deaver is a Sports Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.