What one may consider good citizenship as being too attentive, another may say that it is how one should act. It’s the right thing to always hold the door for someone, respond when they say “hello”, and help someone that is in need. I decided to challenge our school in a kindness test over the past few weeks. I conducted several social experiments to determine the overall citizenship of the students. Although only some didn’t have the best turn out, the students demonstrated that they care for others.

The first experiment I conducted was to see how many people out of fifteen would hold the door for me, and how many people out of ten would respond to my greeting. To my surprise, many didn’t reply. Those who did, though, asked me how my day was and they were respectful and attentive. When I said hello to ten people, five responded with either a hello or a conversation. Students here are usually very polite when it comes to holding the door. Twelve out of fifteen people actually held the door for me in the past two weeks.

Many had a lot to say about why a student on campus wouldn’t feel obligated to help someone out when they needed it. As I interviewed students about this controversial topic, they argued some great points. Some said that students may not help others in need because they don’t have time, or they think someone else will do it. Although time may be tight for many students, in the end what matters is the hearts of the students. Are they willing to take a minute or two out of their day to help someone pick up their papers, or tell someone they dropped something?

“I believe someone would ignore them as they don’t know how to react or as society today would think this is a joke instead of worrying about the actual situation,” said Seth Finally, a freshman.

Set apart from the reasons why a student wouldn’t help someone in need, here’s proof that students at Mountain Ridge do help those in need. I went around the school at lunch and pulled my phone out of my pocket, dropping some headphones. The idea was to see if anyone around me would say that I dropped them. One student saw that I had dropped them, and gave them back to me. Out of the goodness in their heart, they felt the need to give them back to me. Thus shows the kindness in the student’s heart.

The humor and the haunting of falling at school has crossed all of our minds. If you’re really lucky, this will never happen to you. If you’re not so lucky, this will be a story you tell your kids at the dinner table. How would the students at MRHS react if they saw you fall? Would they laugh, help, or ignore? The answers vary. Just a small slip on the stairs doesn’t startle anyone but yourself. Some may not even notice. If you fell at least four steps, here’s how several students would react: get medical attention, laugh then help you up, or ignore and laugh about it in their next class. Luckily, the students who were interviewed for this question would be good kids to fall in front of.

“I would first go down and ask them if they were okay. Then would help them up and if they need medical attention, then they have all my attention,” said Ethan Montag-Caouette, a sophomore.

Other than the physical actions that students can do to help an individual, the verbal actions can help just as much. It’s the little things people will remember. Whether you compliment an outfit, hairstyle, smile, or skills, it always brightens someone’s day. This will lead them to hold onto that comment for as long as they can. The negative ones hurt too. These could stick with one forever, destroying their confidence. At Ridge, students are often being brought up, and complemented.

“My football team is super caring about me and my [injured] leg and are very including of me as if my leg was normal, an example is how they felt I should be a captain for the Ridge-O’Conor freshman game,” said Finally.

There are random acts of kindness going around school all the time. These actions can turn someone having a bad day into a very good day. Things that I saw students doing this week was picking up trash around the trash can that may have blown out, carrying other’s backpacks when their hands are full, and doing everything they can to be helpful towards their teachers.

“I saw this one girl struggling with her chair so a dude got up and helped her with it,” said Blaise Carbaugh, a freshman.

What people don’t realize is the love that is spreading throughout Mountain Ridge as the years go on. It is true that there are negative students bringing others down, but it’s amazing how many actually are bringing them back up. Why would you ignore someone that needs help because you think someone else would do it. In society, people have this mindset. By helping someone out the first time as seen in my experiments, it makes Ridge a good citizenship school.