Day of Respect encourages kindness
June 4, 2008
By Laura Geggel
Through memory of Columbine victim, Mount Si students learn how to treat each other
Students at Mount Si High School on May 29 learned about Rachel Scott and the values of kindness and respect she was known for. Scott was the first victim of the Columbine High School shooting in 1999. After her death, a nationwide program was begun which hosts 35 speakers who travel to schools spreading Scott’s message of hope and kindness.
The presentation was the second part of a three-year program at Mount Si called “The Day of Respect”, which highlights compassion between community members.
“This year was different, because it showed the difference one person can have,” said Lazarus Honeywell, who is on the ASB student relations committee.
“(Last year), immediately after, for about the next week, it was about the best week of school, because people got all of these bubbly feelings and it ended up being really nice.”
During this year’s assembly, presenter Derek Kilgore, a friend of the Scott family, showed video interviews of the lives Scott positively influenced. Before her death, she had befriended a number of school classmates who had a difficult time fitting in at high school.
One day, Scott and her friends sat next to a new student who was eating lunch by herself. Adam Kyler, a disabled student at Columbine, said Scott’s thoughtful banter helped him decide not to commit suicide during his difficult high school years.
In another instance, Scott stopped by the side of the road to hold an umbrella over Austin Wiggins as he fixed a flat tire in the rain. Scott did not know Wiggins, but she felt moved to help him, a message Kilgore reiterated throughout the assembly.
Sophomore Becky Garding said she enjoyed the assembly’s constructive message.
“The assembly’s most important part was how we should start a chain reaction by being kind to people and how important even being kind to random people you don’t know is,” Garding said. “(Kindness) can really affect someone even if you don’t know them.”
Students who chose to accept the legacy challenge were given the option to sign a poster following the presentation.
The assembly began with a recording of Robert Kennedy’s April 1968 speech delivered the day after Dr. Martin Luther King Junior’s assassination, “On the Mindless Menace of Violence,” which emphasized people’s similarities, instead of their differences.
Following the presentation on Scott, Natural Helpers, ASB officers and club leaders were invited to a smaller session that gave concrete ways to start chain reactions of kindness. A new-student welcome committee and a letter-writing campaign to groups of students and staff grabbed the interest of those in attendance.
The program will return to Mount Si next year. Sophomore Anna Sprouse, who sat in on the workshop, said she couldn’t wait to implement some of the new programs encouraging kindness.
“It really important for our school,” Sprouse said. “We can do so much.”
Reporter Laura Geggel can be reached at 392-6434 x221 or lgeggel@snovalleystar.com.
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