The BVNW student government has been sponsoring the R-word Campaign for the past four years. Today at lunch, student government has a banner out for students to sign and an online pledge to stop using the word ‘retarded’ in a derogatory fashion.

“We set up the event and we do a lot of events throughout the year,” senior Ashley Rossin said. “We do ‘Little Feet’ in December and we do the big Special Olympics, the Kansas-wide one in May and this is kind of our pre-cursor. We actually get a lot of people who want to volunteer from today.”

The R-word Campaign is an international campaign to stop the use of the word ‘retarded’ because it is actually a medical condition, Rossin said.

“It is actually degrading to people who have special needs,” Rossin said. “So we pledge to remove it from our vocabulary every year.”