![Minutes before the Activities Fair in the gym, president Abhi Gowda ‘26 prepares the stall for his club Helping Hands, Sept. 4. A relatively new club, Helping Hands was co-started by Gowda and focuses on assisting the homeless, and just last year they succeeded in raising a couple hundred donations to send to shelters. This year, they have goals to expand, with hopes to increase volunteer opportunities and take in-person trips to shelters, as well as extend their help beyond just homeless people. “The Activities Fair gives a lot of underclassmen the opportunity to really get to know the Canyon culture, and it gives them many opportunities for service and volunteering,” Gowda said. “[Through the Activities Fair,] I hope to find a bunch of new and passionate members about our club and just get our name out there and spread awareness to the cause that we’re fighting for.”](https://rockmediaonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/1-2-1200x885.jpg)
![The winter guard team makes fifth place at the state championship finals in the Denver Coliseum, March 30. The team performed to Barnes Country's “Glitter and Gold,” lead by coaches Margo Sanford, Blair Bickerton and Anna Orgren. In their class there were a total of nine groups participating, and the top five who made it to finals received a plaque. “[Walking onto the stage] is very nerve-wracking, but also very exciting as well. When you first start color guard there's a lot of anxiety and uncertainty when you first perform in front of an audience, but once you've done it for a while, it starts to become the best part of the season,” Ella West ‘25 said. “It's very fulfilling to see an audience react to something you've put your heart and soul into.”](https://rockmediaonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Both-socal-media-nd-website-main-1-1200x846.jpg)
![April marks the 25th anniversary of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, created by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC). This month is to spread awareness of the harassment, assault and abuse that happens around the world. The symbol that represented the month was a teal ribbon; however, some survivors of assault create different symbols and movements like the TikTok trend in 2022, where survivors would tattoo Medusa on their body, in honor of her backstory in Greek Mythology. “I don't think [this month is known] at all. I rarely see anybody talk about it. I rarely see much of an emphasis on posting it online, or much discussion about it, and I feel like there needs to be way more discussion,” an anonymous source said. “I think just validating every experience that a person has gone through, regardless of the degree of it, the severity, is an essential step into making sure that people are aware that this is a very real problem in a society and that we need to do better in addressing it.”](https://rockmediaonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_0011-1200x900.jpg)
![Lesbian Visibility Day is April 26, and it’s a holiday to celebrate the lesbian community of the world. Lesbian Visibility day was established in 2008 by many queer activists and organizations who sought to raise more awareness for lesbian history and culture. “So this is why during Lesbian Visibility [Day] we celebrate and center all lesbians, both cis and trans, while also showing solidarity with all LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary people,” Linda Reily, in an article written by her, said.](https://rockmediaonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lesbian-Visibility-day.jpeg)
Student Worth Reduced to a Digit
Before being deleted, the Instagram account @rc_ranks listed the top fifty hottest girls in the freshman grade, with plans to make a second for sophomores. Here’s the issue with that.
February 28, 2019
Students.
Daughters and sons.
Freshman.
Jaguars.
Students, checking their Instagram feed, expecting smiling faces and wholesome content were met with a list ranking attractiveness that stripped away their individuality and personality, to be rendered down from human to a digit.
People are being reduced from human being to a single number, a single digit that constitutes their worth. Socially affluent freshman are being ranked from 1-50 on a list of conventional attractiveness.The individual who did this may have been grasping for their five minutes of fame, but have unearthed an underlying societal issue of objectifying others and judging humans solely based on conventional beauty norms. In this pained society, the last thing we need is to discount human worth even more. This account is participating in defamation of character by making false claims of ‘hot or not’. Ranking others causes harm emotionally and socially to those who were and weren’t ranked. This can take part in damaging reputations.
I wholeheartedly oppose rcranks and their actions. I am appalled by the level of disrespect for human decency portrayed in their posts. People aren’t mere objects to be written up like a grocery list. Not only was there one account that ranked the top 50 freshman girls and boys, but there was a copycat account created that ranked soley girls. These students were ranked without giving their consent to rcranks. Relatable RC even took part in this matter and made a post opposing the rcranks accounts. Nicholas Bogani 22’ was ranked on the list and opposed it. “I was shocked…I mean I don’t know how they came up with this information. There’s no one hottest person,” Bogani said.
Elise Barton 22’ who was following the chain of events that transpired was upset by the list.“I think it’s pretty mean and unfair because they’re basically just rating like the most popular people in the grade. It’s kind of saying that the rest of the people are inferior. People are just really mean to each other,” Barton said.
The individual who created this rank of freshman may have thought they were helping to make a few popular students feel better about themselves or created this list to make themselves feel more socially successful. Obviously, their possible intentions have made people who are and aren’t on the list feel bad about themselves. There is no positive to come out of creating this list and it has only had negative ramifications which include hundreds of student comments demanding that the lists and accounts are taken down. “Whoever created this account is despicable. I really, really hope you take this account down. Labeling and giving girls numbers is horrifying! If you do have some kind of messed up opinions, fine. But don’t voice them. You are taking something society is trying to move away from and applying it to highschool freshman. No one cares…You have no right to be ranking girls on their appearance. No one likes it, not even the girls on the list,” Madeline Conrad 21’ commented in an Instagram comment on the list from rcranks2.
I feel that this ranking being on a widespread social media platform, Instagram, more people are able to see this list, including Future Jags. This can damage the reputation of our school in the eyes of Future Jags and make our school environment unwelcoming. “Well I think it’s kinda ridiculous and this kind of thing is something that elementary schoolers normally do. The only positive effect this could possibly have is an esteem boost for the people who ranked high. It does make me angry that a group of people would make such a childish list,” Future Jag, Jamie Kim 23’ said.
I propose that everyone reports the accounts to Instagram and school administration to be taken down and the person responsible for them faces the appropriate consequences. As a student body, we need to make sure that something like this doesn’t happen again. There was a student attractiveness ranking list during current freshmen’s time in Rocky Heights Middle School, and it happened again. We need to discourage students from this behavior and give them a reality check. We are the future leaders of this country and if we continue to behave years below our age, we have a grim future ahead of us. I believe that we can do better and be better. We need to grow and learn from this lapse in judgement and work on treating others better and showing respect to our peers.