When I found about the new incentives system last year I, like many other students, was happy to have finals that I didn’t have to worry about and felt like a weight had been taken off of my shoulders. This year when I found about the limiting of all our incentives I was initially confused and somewhat aggravated.

The way I saw it, this was just another action by the school that was taking away students freedom, even if we had only gotten those liberties in the last year, currently I share the opinion of many other students on the matter which is a combination of resignation and discontent.

With the introduction of finals incentives at the end of last year students suddenly saw themselves having an unlimited number of “incentives” which they could use on any of their classes finals to receive a grade equal that of their total average, as long as the student’s attendance in the class was up to par. For many students including myself this was like a kind of heaven-sent blessing which we used to the greatest extent of our ability. I personally ended up using my incentives for six of my classes.

The changing of the system this year has resulted in the limiting of incentives per student so that upperclassmen can use two, while lowerclassmen are only given one. Not only do I think this is just another kind of demeaning way of putting down freshmen and sophomores, but it also creates a divide between the older and younger students. These new limitations also create for students the new task of picking and choosing what classes to use the incentives for. As bad as it is being given less incentives, the system has also changed to forbid students from using them in certain types of classes, which constrains student freedom even further.

If I were somehow in control of what to do with the incentives at school I might implement a new system in which students ability to achieve incentives was not only based on their attendance, but also on a scale of how challenging their classes were. This would result in students who were taking all AP classes, for example, to have more incentives than those who might be taking all regular classes. Classes would be ranked in points going up to the hundreds, which would correlate to a certain number of incentives. Some classes like off periods would not count towards the total count due to not holding any academic weight.

With a new incentives system this year I have found myself questioning both the school and talking to my peers about our grievances. I believe that in this aspect and others the administration at Bowie would benefit from negotiating with students on a larger level, rather than discounting our opinions. Hopefully in the future this can be a reachable goal so that both the administration and students can work together for the betterment of educational advancement at Bowie.