“Dude. Be Nice.” is a platform for young people to express positivity throughout the community. Bear River High School plans on participating in this program.

Dr. Amy Besler, Bear River’s Principal, explained what “Dude. Be Nice.” is all about.

“‘Dude. Be Nice.’ is an organization that is aimed at ‘telling stories of people in awesome communities doing good things,’ she said. “In particular, they help students create special recognition events for staff members who tend to go unnoticed but deserve special recognition. They make videos of these experiences, which are designed to inspire others, and are sometimes able to support the schools with swag for the recipients of their recognition efforts.”

She went on to talk about her hopes for Bear River’s participation.

“My hope is that this project will help one or more deserving staff members understand how much their hard work and dedication mean to us,”  Dr. Besler said. “Additionally, I think participating in putting an event like this together is a great way for students to develop empathy, as it causes them to really stop and think about what others here at school do for them.”  

Camden Criesco, a senior, talked about how he heard about the project.

“I had seen some of the ‘Dude. Be Nice.’ videos on social media and was inspired by them,” he said. “I then met Miss California, Jillian Smith, who came to Bear River recently to educate our students about this organization and encourage us to implement a project here.”  

Criesco went on to talk about how Leadership is going to incorporate the project into the school.

“We are currently working with our Leadership and Team CORE students to identify our recipients at Bear River and put a plan in place,” Criesco said. “We have some great ideas flowing, but will keep them to ourselves for now so that we don’t spoil the surprise.”

Katelyn Lorenzo, a sophomore, explained what ‘Dude. Be Nice.’ is.

“The ‘Dude. Be Nice.’ project is something that we originally heard from [Miss California] and it’s basically throwing just a big rally for someone who doesn’t really get any recognition and does a lot of hard work and is kinda like behind the scenes or is really involved and doesn’t get recognized,” Lorenzo said.

Lorenzo elaborated on how she thinks this project will help the school.  

“Bear River, I think, will learn from this and see that everybody takes a part in what we do for our school,” she said. “That we can really just show our appreciation for people that do everyday things and don’t really get recognized as much they just do because they need the money or they like being around likes something like that.

Marie-Claire Desplancke, a junior, expressed how she believes this project will bring the Bear River community together.

“I think it would improve Bear River because it would bring other people they don’t know that well together,” she said. “I mean, we all know each other in some way shape or form but I think it will be a way of like having more common ground with everyone and they can look back.”