The date was March 6, 2017, when tragedy struck the lockers of the many high school students involved in Knowledge Bowl. An innocent-looking poster was taped up to show the team’s uniformity. A closer look at these posters showed a minimalist-style Yoda fromStar Wars and the printed words: “The Knowlege is strong with this one. Good Luck, Knowlege Bowlers at the tournament.” This message may seem to be typed with good intentions, but it takes a true knowledge bowler to noticed the misspelling of the word “Knowlege”.

Senior, Rachel Dauer, was the one responsible for the making of these locker decorations. In an interview, she informed me that the reason for the misspelling was that she had been asked to revise part of the decorations after she had already finished the first design, that had all correct spellings. She began to make the new posters late at night after she was stressed from the death of a cow on the dairy farm she lives on. Dauer was completely unaware of the spelling mistake until fifth hour that day. When the news was given to her she was completely crushed, feeling fully responsible for the entire incident. With what she called “shame”, she went around the school taking down the many decorations.

Due to the news being brought to her attention too late, many students were able to see the posters and share pictures of them on Snapchat. “Knowlege” seemed to be the main joke as students repeated it to each other in passing. Overall the poster seemed to lighten moods more than if the words were spelled correctly. Dauer ended up taking down all but two, one on Mr. Bute’s door and one on her locker so that everyone would know that she was responsible. Even though this event caused a great deal of stress to her, Dauer still found something to laugh about saying, “I sent it to Mr. Bute. He must have seen it at least three times.” Even with the posters down and hopefully gone forever, the “Knowlege” Bowl team did an amazing job at their meet on Tuesday with four teams moving on to regionals.