Sophomore Sara Dodsworth shares her experience of prayer at See You at the Pole
By Kasey Bennett
Sara Dodsworth, a sophomore at Upper Arlington High School, found a place to express her faith and meet new people in an outlet that many students at UA have never heard of–this outlet is called See You at the Pole. Meeting once a year in September, Christians and anyone who would like to meet at the school’s flag pole, pray for guidance and friends. Curious onlookers walk by, and from a brief conversation with Sara after the fact, reveals her opinions about See You at the Pole, prayer at school, and friends who don’t share her faith.
Q. Ok. So, you went to Prayer at the Pole correct?
DODSWORTH. Yes, I did. See you at the Pole.
Q. Ok, See you at the Pole. So, what was that like? I mean, how did you feel?
DODSWORTH. I thought it was really cool that we got to make an impact on peoples lives and pray for the school and stuff. And, I mean, our youth pastor showed up and he said that people were driving by and looking and so, it was cool to know that we were making an impact.
Q. That is really cool. So what did you do? I mean what did you pray about?
DODSWORTH. It was mostly just prayer on thanking God for what we have and asking for guidance for certain people that we know who are not Christians and in general for the school to have good guidance.
Q. So, do you think this is a good thing that the students do? Because it is student run correct?
DODSWORTH. Right.
Q. So do you think that it is a good thing the students came up with this idea? Do you think that they should do it more often? Or is once a year enough?
DODSWORTH. I think that it would be kinda cool to do it more often, but it might ruin the effect to do it more than once a year because then it would not be See You at the Pole day. It would just be once a week or once a month.
Q. Do you think if students from other religions decide to do something like this that it would “ruin the effect”?
DODSWORTH. I think it would be cool if they did that because then it would sorta be like, we started this one huge thing that a lot of people follow. I think also that it is open to everyone.
Q. Ok. So how many people came? Was it a huge group of people or was it a few that decided to come?
DODSWORTH. Well, I went at seven and there were seven of us and then apparently, at 8:20 since it was Office Hours, there were seven more. So, there were about fourteen.
Q. So do you think that the school should, not necessarily have a Bible study, but a class about religion?
DODSWORTH. I think that would be kinda cool, but at the same time there might be some people who take it to debate about religion. So you might not be learning about religion and you might just be.
Q. Debating?
DODSWORTH. Yeah, debating like about what’s right and what’s wrong.
Q. So do you have any friends who you debate about stuff like that with?
DODSWORTH. I have a few that I know that are not Christians and some of them are atheists and different other religions. Sometimes we talk about it, but usually we just steer away from the subject.
Q. Speaking of steering away from the subject, in a lot of classes, especially some of my classes I had freshman and sophomore year, whenever we began to mention a religious topic in class we would begin to veer away from it. Or sort of belittle it a little bit. Making it less of what it was. Do you think teachers do that too much? Or do you think they should talk about it head on?
DODSWORTH. I feel like that some teachers just will not talk about Christianity, but would be willing to talk about other religions because there are not as many people that are in those religions.
Q. So it is not as controversial.
DODSWORTH. Right. It is not as controversial.