Thumbs covered in ink, students add their fingerprint to the letter of their choice on the banner.

The Thumb-print Project, created by student leadership for the No Place for Hate campaign, took place over the week of Feb. 27.

“Essentially, we are gathering everyone up to thumb-print the poster and give a helping hand to stop bullying,” junior Jimmy Counihan said. “I think the whole idea of the thumb-print really comes back to individuality and being unique and being one and being a part of a larger group.”

Students went during their social studies class to take a pledge to detract from taking pride in rejecting others and taking pride in being prejudiced.

“We wanted to differentiate what good pride is and what bad pride is,” Counihan said. “We want to work towards taking pride in empowering others and taking pride in being a good community member.”

Everybody in student leadership worked together  to come up with this project.

“We tried to come with a project that was unique,” junior Hannah Wolfson said. “We wanted one that would impact people personally on a deeper level.”

The student leadership thought about what they wanted to do for a long time before settling on pride.

“Because the slogan for the school is ‘pride in performance,’ we thought it’d be nice to use pride as a word to promote the activity,” Counihan said. “The reason we decided to use false pride and embrace real pride is because pride is kind of a blanket word that a lot of people use.”

The leadership teacher, Vickie Benson, likes the project they have come up with.

“I hope people really see the negative parts of pride and the positive parts of pride,” Benson said. “Hopefully just by seeing the words up there, the ones they came up with to represent what pride is, people at least think about how they utilize that in their own lives and hopefully they accept the challenge to better one piece of their own life.”

The project has students press their thumb-print to a letter that signifies what they want to improve on.

“I feel like it’s really important for someone to face something that they know they can improve on,” Wolfson said. “I feel like it’s more intimate because you know your own weaknesses, but you don’t ever want to put them out there or face them. Printing your thumb in what you pledge to be better in is really significant to me.”

Benson supported the idea the class came up with.

“I really thought it was a creative of the class to come up with using the thumb-print as a unique identity as opposed to just signing a pledge,” Benson said. “You sign your name on a million things, but you don’t really thumb-print everything so I like that piece of [the project]. I think it makes it more personal.”

They’ve been working on the project since the start of the school year, and they are excited to see it go up.

“There’s rumor that Bowie is going to start a hall of honor,” Benson said. “I’m not sure where that’s going to be yet, but that’s in the plans. The banner would be the start or end of that hallway, and anybody at Bowie during this school year would be up there.”

The project has a lot of personal significance to the student leadership group.

“I think everyone can relate to having bullying in life and having to deal with high school drama,” Counihan said. “I think this is going be good for raising awareness and increasing inclusivity on campus, because it’s something we can all take pride in.”