Walking through the halls of FHN, some of the various murals and paintings on the cement walls by past students can be seen. One of these in particular is the handprint mural outside of the theatre room. Once students were inducted to be part of FHN’s Thespian Troupe, they would put their own handprints on the wall around the comedy and tragedy masks. However, this year, drama teacher Kim Sulzner has decided to clean up the mural.

“While I understand it’s cleaning up the school, painting over the handprints takes over tradition,” senior Zac Cary said. “Drama club is trying to restore some of that by putting the handprints in the auditorium but it will never replace the spirit of the tradition that it lost by painting over it.”

The comedy and tragedy masks still stay standing, but the handprints have been removed. These changes were due to some inside jokes other students had made on them that were eight to ten years old that didn’t have any context to visiting guests or parents that questioned them.

“I think it’s unfortunate we had to cover the mural because of a couple students and it kind of affected everyone but looking back on it, it’s not a huge deal to me anymore,” drama club alumni Jessica Olsen said. “When I left that club, the legacy that I left wasn’t in those handprints. I left it in other ways, so in the end, what I left behind from that chapter of my life was in the performances, not in the handprints.”

The history of the handprints are not forgotten. Sulzner plans to take photographic images of the handprints to reprint and display in the light trap outside the auditorium. The drama club will also be going back onto the mural and painting the history of the club shows onto the remaining mural to be more representative of their club.

“We need to finish cleaning it up but what we would like to add is the history of the theatre program. People didn’t know what the inside jokes meant and could have been misconstrued, so we want to make more of like a living history but we aren’t going to lose that piece,” Sulzner said. “It’s still a process but hopefully it’ll be an improvement.”