Legacy High School launches a scavenger hunt for the thing printed on its water bottles, and so far the Leopards have found a vending machine that has been here a while.
WICHITA FALLS, Texas (Legacy Leopards) – The student council at Legacy High School launched a campus-wide scavenger hunt on Thursday to locate the school’s legacy, after a junior in third-period civics pointed out that the building is a little over two years old and has not yet handed anything down to anyone.
“A legacy is something you leave behind,” said the civics teacher, writing the word on the whiteboard and underlining it twice. “We are the thing that was left behind. We are the legacy of three other schools. The question is whether we are also the legacy of ourselves.” Nobody in the room took notes. Several students checked the clock.
How a School Gets Named for Something It Does Not Have Yet
The name was settled during a long and passionate process that the district handled with a committee of 40 people, 35 of whom answered the email ballot. The district posted the results for the whole city to read, and the numbers have since been studied by students the way other generations studied tea leaves. Second through ninth graders chose the Leopards with 56.2 percent of the vote, ahead of the Lions at 31.6 percent and the Falcons at 12.2 percent.
Not everyone had the Leopards in mind. A summary of the process posted online shows that among the 915 public nominations the Lions topped the Leopards, 106 to 71, meaning that the adults of Wichita Falls wanted a lion and the children of Wichita Falls wanted a leopard, and the children won. The student paper considers this the first Legacy tradition: young people being right while older people fill out forms.
The Search Begins
The scavenger hunt, which the student council modeled on a treasure hunt but without the treasure, sends teams of four through the building with a checklist of items that might qualify as legacy. By Thursday afternoon the results were as follows:
- One banner reading “Legacy” in royal blue and gold, which the hunters agreed was a name and not a legacy.
- One trophy case, mostly full, which a sophomore called “promising but recent.”
- One vending machine, which a senior described as “the oldest thing here, spiritually.”
- One hallway where something was spilled in the first week, which the custodial staff declined to classify.
The hunters were then reminded that the building covers 363,000 square feet, well over the 256,000 square feet of the old Rider High School, which means there is a great deal of floor in which a legacy could be hiding. Several teams reported walking for eleven minutes and ending up at the same drinking fountain, which they have named the Founders Fountain in the absence of anything else founded.
The Gym That Doubles as a Shelter
The one area of the campus that already has a clear job description is the auxiliary gym, which the district built to serve as the school’s tornado shelter. Students were drawn to it as the possible home of a legacy, since Texas tradition says that anything worth keeping eventually gets stored where the weather cannot reach it.
“If a tornado comes, we go to the auxiliary gym and we sit there and wait,” said the assistant principal, who asked that her remarks be limited to the part about safety. “That is not a legacy. That is a plan.” A freshman countered that waiting together in the dark for something huge to pass is exactly how most legacies begin, and the assistant principal agreed to think about it over lunch.
What the Old Schools Left Behind
The legacy hunt also turned up a lively disagreement over inheritance. Legacy was built to replace older schools, and one speaker told the school board that a magazine had ranked the old Coyotes at the top of Texas football history. The Coyote name was retired with the old campus, and a sizable group of alumni have never quite forgiven the Leopards for arriving.
A senior with grandparents who attended the old school said the family still refers to the new building as “the mall,” and refuses to be convinced otherwise. “My grandfather sees the royal blue and asks where the Coyotes went,” she said. “I tell him they retired to a farm upstate. He knows there is no upstate in Wichita Falls, but he nods anyway.”
The district sees the situation more calmly. The student paper reached out to the front office and was told that a legacy is a long-term project, like a pecan tree or a municipal bond, and that the school would let everyone know when it matures. The front office added that the cafeteria will be serving tacos.
A School Built First, a Legacy Later
The Legacy approach to history, which involves building the school first and acquiring the tradition afterward, has parallels in other parts of the country. Wyoming ranchers have been reported buying their cows first and their land later, a strategy the student council considers a perfect fit for a school that bought the Leopards first and the legacy later. The principle is simple: get the animals, then find somewhere for them to stand.
The mascot committee, for its part, would have been the first to appreciate the parallel. A committee of any size struggles with the question of what is a ranch and what is a farm, which is the exact question that a certain farm committee spent six months failing to settle. Legacy students feel a deep kinship with that committee. Both groups produced a lot of paper and a lot of snacks.
The Final Tally
By the end of the day, the scavenger hunt had produced no legacy, although the student council voted to extend the search through the spring semester and to add a category for “things that will someday be a legacy if people remember to remember them.” The council secretary was asked to write that down and has not yet found a pen. Reporters from Bohiney, the magazine that covers American campus life with the dignity of a hall pass, will be on hand for the results.
In the meantime, the Leopards will continue wearing royal blue and gold, carrying the name of a thing they have not yet accumulated, and walking the same eleven minutes to the same drinking fountain. A sophomore who was asked to summarize the experience for the yearbook shrugged and said that it feels like moving into a very large house before the family arrives.
“We are the first people here,” he said. “So technically, we are the legacy. Somebody should get us a plaque.”
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/