Unity Day becomes Unity Week April 1-7

Kierra Vaughan and Maddie Koppenhofer

Unity day has been a tradition at Fossil Ridge High School for the past three years. The purpose is to help all students attending feel welcome and part of one entity. The tradition first began with the FRHS Lip Dub, which is still on YouTube and has received more than 50,000 views. The video portrays almost every student in the entire school as they are grouped together according to sports or clubs that each kid is involved in.

This year, however, the plan is to lengthen the day into a whole week devoted to unity. Each day will hold a different theme which will include several activities. The Diversity Leadership class has paired with Mr. Gallagher, Mrs. Vasa and several other teachers to organize the events and activities. Mrs. Vasa, one of the main coordinators, said that Unity Week is “a week for the school to work on coming together and making new connections.”

The week begins on April 1 and ends on Monday, April 7, when the school will be filming the “Moment in Time” video that is predicted to portray every student in the whole school. Similar to the Lip Dub, students will have the opportunity to be filmed in a group of their choice, including a sports team or club. The difference this year is that kids are allowed to create their own groups based on their interests. Ms. Vasa said that one of the benefits of this tradition is to “break down the walls between students.”

For Mr. Rodon, unity is important, being from a different culture. “It’s good when students can come together from different cultures and focus on what they have in common instead of the differences,” he said.

Assistant principal Mr. Nye believes in the importance of activities and school wide opportunities like Unity Week to bring students together, but “students only get as much out of any experience as they put into it.” Mr. Nye said that the Diversity Leadership class pairing with Put it Forward, as well as Ridge TV have all modeled unification by “working together to make this event happen… I know they’ve put a lot of hard work into it,” Nye said.