Last year, in an attempt to not offend the student body, one of the senior superlatives was changed from ‘Facebook Creep’ to ‘Facebook Guru’. Now, with this spirit week another change has been made. The classic ‘Nerd Day’ has been changed to ‘Genius Day’ to present the same effect. The change was intended to prevent offense and still keep the tradition of ‘Nerd Day’.

“We were told by the principles that it [Nerd Day] was offensive to some people,” Key Club member Danielle Stagner said.

Key Club is a club that is in charge of spirit weeks and helps establish spirit weeks throughout the year for Rolla High School. This year, Key Club members had to go about changing their signs they made from ‘Nerd Day’ to ‘Genius Day.’

“All the spirit days have to be approved by the administration. [With] the whole nerd day thing, the signs were already made before it was approved by the administration. We got the actual spirit days; we decided that nerd day had a negative connotation to it, [it] was changed to genius day to avoid any negative feelings about it,” Assistant Principal Smith said.

This decision was made in response to a few complaints and to simply avoid a problem with complaints before any occurred. The change of nerd to genius day comes in a large group of decisions to make the school more politically correct and less offensive.

“Hopefully it will let us get away from the name and next year everyone will just know it’s ‘Genius Day’ and not ‘Nerd Day’,” Smith said.