Three years ago, the Student Council started an event that has become an annual tradition at BHS, RAVE Week. This year’s week of “Respecting and Valuing Everybody” was significantly cut short by two canceled days of school due to the cold. These and previous cancelled days of school have presented great challenges to the Student Council.
“[The cancelled days] affected it a lot,” said Student Council Advisor Evan Ronken. “The other days that we had where we missed […] were though too because we scheduled Student Council meetings to plan it, but there were also work-nights that were planned, so some of the planning ahead of time had to happen more before school, AAA, or after school where it is tougher to get people together.”
Ronken also explained some of the history behind RAVE week.
“It started about three years ago, it was a Student Council plan that they had gotten from another school. We go twice a year to conferences where we get a chance to see what other councils do and one of the schools did something called ‘Everybody Loves Everybody’ week, and the kids really liked the ideas behind it, it was meant to build unity within the school, focus on positive things, kind of be anti-bullying. I thought that was great, but I said ‘You know, I really don’t like the name “Everybody Loves Everybody”,’ and they didn’t think that’d go well and so they met for a while and they came up with ‘RAVE Week’ which is ‘Respect and Value Everybody’ and some council members came up with the design […]. Every year we’ve been trying to include other groups. So, even though student council is the one that organises it, we’ve asked for help from other groups and […] the idea is that it’s not just something that’s just student council.”
Students and staff also have their own thoughts on why they participated in RAVE Week and what it means to them.
“I dressed up for RAVE Week because, when I was younger, there were a lot of things in my school that no one really liked each other,” said Sophomore Tristina Aguirre. “So, I really like the fact that in RAVE Week we could all come together. RAVE Week to me means that our whole school can just come together and love each other. There’s no judgement, there’s no punishment, it’s just everyone being nice.”
“[Dressing up for RAVE Week] is really easy to do. It’s a nice celebration of our students working hard to work together on a cause to just bring about what is says, respect and value everyone, and we think those are great values as a school, and we want that to go on every week, but I think it is significant to have a week that’s really recognized at our school,” said Assistant Principal Brandon Prell. “I think the student council has done a good job of promoting it, the painting done in the windows, announcements being done, having it be something where it is very simple for kids to be a part of, wearing a color on a day, is very easy for kids to be able to be and do. It’s too bad we lost two out of the five days due to cold, but those things happen, I still think it’s a successful week, so I hope that students feel we can continue on with this tradition.”
