The distinctive divide in class culture

Culture and community are a part of everyone’s daily lives. High school is a time when community and cultures are featured and built. Of course we must look at the fact that COVID-19 had a tremendous impact on this creation. There was basically 2 years where our community was through a zoom call. 

Now though that things have been settled back down the past 2 years a strong community is still not present. Grades are more divided than ever even though students are back to normal life. So why is there such a lack of grade unity at the school? 

A key component of culture comes from traditions, which is something that unfortunately the school lacks. An example of this can be found in how there aren’t many activities that join the freshman, sophomore, junior and senior classes together. While the school lacks this class-based unity, other high schools in the Seattle area have thriving class traditions.

  Students at Garfield high school, for example, have  an infamous day titled “purple and white”  at the beginning and end of each year where each class dresses in these bold colors and has assemblies full of games.This is a beloved day that students from all grades look forward to. So why don’t we have red and black days to start off and end our school year?  

This would be a great way to unify all grades without each one dressing in distinctive colors but having all grades wearing the same color.

. Another part of creating culture and community would be having traditional customs for the senior classes. Roosevelt High School has a tradition where the seniors after prom all go to a cabin called “Prom House.’’  

At a prom house, a majority of the senior class all go and split the cost of staying their prom weekend at a beautiful cabin in the woods. It has been a Roosevelt High School tradition for several years. 

 Bishop Blanchet also has a similar prom weekend trip where a big part of the senior class goes up to Suncadia for a few nights to commemorate their senior year. 

The Prom house and the cabin trip to Suncadia are traditions that many of these seniors look forward to every year along with other senior traditions like annual trips to Los Cabos in Mexico. 

 Roosevelt High School, along with Seattle Prep High School, O’dea High School and Bishop Blanchet High School all have a yearly senior trip where many go to Cabo. This is a tropical paradise vacation that takes place during spring break of their senior year. It’s a marking of these seniors almost being done with their four years of high school.

There must be an obvious look at the fact that a cabin trip and a trip to Mexico are of course not the most realistic ways to create a school culture. Privilege is embedded and ingrained into these trips, private schools or richer public schools have a lot more economic status. Ballard is a public school that features economic diversity. 

Trips like these aren’t the automatic fix to the imbalance of class unity but it has regardless created a sense of culture and tradition. 

These are momentous events that bring the class together for a few days each year; it’s the final closing of these senior high school careers. 

The creation of culture doesn’t have to be this costly. Instead, it’s about having something that all grades at some point can experience through high school.  Culture and customs are centered around an annual occurrence that people from all grades can be a part of either that year or same day in their future. At BHS, this has either been lost or even scarier, never truly existed in the first place.