B-CC’s True Colors

By Margarita Lazo
Class Color day is an exciting event that has taken place at B-CC for years. The atmosphere is fun and filled with class spirit, and “it brings each class together like nothing else and really makes you proud to be a part of your class,” senior Chris Henderson says. After 7th period, students gather at the football stadium bleachers for an enjoyable pep rally and show their class spirit by cheering on classmates who are participating in the games. Each class dresses up in a different color; seniors look forward to dressing up in blue and gold, juniors paint their faces red, and sophomores wear their first “real color,” green.

Oh, but wait…what about the freshmen? Freshmen typically wear white on Color Day, making them almost too easy to “tag,” or mark with upperclassman colors. For many years, freshmen have been warned to wear something they don’t really care about, because at the end of the day, their clothes will be far from white. Their clothes are marked up with many different colors – green paint from the sophomore who graduates from being the “tagged” to being a “tagger”; red paint from the junior who is officially an upperclassman, and of course, blue and gold from the senior who wants to show class dominance. The white freshman shirt is the perfect canvas to display such art. To some students, tagging is completely harmless. Henderson claims that “[tagging] is just a part of color day and I don’t think it really did any harm to anyone.” Most would agree with him. Tagging is usually just a fun way to tease underclassmen friends and most of us have been “tagged” at least once.
However, other students have gone beyond tagging and have “hazed” freshmen by stuffing them in trashcans or lockers. Some people think hazing is a persistent problem at B-CC and Principal Lockard is determined to stop it. How she was going to go about that, students weren’t sure. Rumors were spread. The first rumor was spread that students would wear the “B-CC United” shirts instead of class colors. The counter rumor to this was that seniors would wear all black. A third rumor, which was perhaps the worst one, was that Color Day would be completely cancelled. By now, most students know the truth behind these rumors.
Color Day is not cancelled.
Ms. Lockard cleared up all rumors in a message to bccnet which states, “This year each class will proudly wear their colors.” Thankfully, Color Day will remain relatively unchanged except for one thing: no tagging or hazing. Ms. Lockard continues by writing that “[Students] may not… bring any of the paint, colored hair spray, markers, or anything else that can be used to write or paint on each other or the building”.
Can upperclassmen follow this rule and end the tagging and hazing? Perhaps leaving the markers at home will eliminate the tagging, but what about the hazing? We were all freshmen once and some upperclassmen think that a “tag free” and “haze-free” Color Day shouldn’t be a problem. Senior David Segun thinks “it’s only a problem when we have immature people.” Other students, however, do not think this solution is satisfactory; senior Sierra Koenick says “I don’t think [the rules] can stop us.” Koenick also thinks that tagging and “[hazing] is pretty much tradition,” possibly as much a tradition as Color Day itself.
So, which way will the upperclassmen go? I guess we’ll know their true colors on Color Day!