The week of March 13th, the Dominion school spirit rock in front of the school spelled out “Bienbenidos,” assumably, the Dominion SCA was attempting to spell “Bienvenidos,” the Spanish word for “welcome.” This same week, students from Calafell, Spain were participating in an exchange program at Dominion. 

Considering the high spanish-speaking population at Dominion, and the fact that the SCA was attempting to welcome the Spanish exchange students to Dominion, more care should have been taken in making sure that the word was correctly spelled. 

“Bienvenidos” is a word that is taught in Spanish I. Even banking on the possibility that no student in SCA had taken Spanish I, any of them could have looked up a translation to assure that their supposed welcome message to the Spanish exchange students was spelled correctly. Something as simple as a google search would have prevented the error, but also shown basic respect on the SCA’s part. A simple misspelling can happen to anyone, however, knowing that the word is in another language, the minimum they could do is assure that it is spelled correctly on the rock that every student sees prior to entering the school building.

Coincidentally, the “Viva La Fiesta” school dance is happening in nine days, and when staff reporter Callie Stravinski interviewed the Vice President of Communications about the dance, she said, “We wanted to get another part of Dominion involved.” She went on to mention that it will be “kind of just like a ‘Mexican party’ in a way…[and that] we tried to kind of make it like a quince.” 

The SCA should be getting student input and doing research on their events, because calling a school dance being marketed towards the hispanic and latino students at Dominion a “mexican party,” is ignorant, and had they talked to students about it, or done research, they would know better than to call it that. The recent incidents of ignorance from the SCA have been disappointing, because although they were most likely well intentioned, it is clear that there hasn’t been an emphasis on researching their events or being aware of what they are projecting to students