with
Tats Traditions By Brooklyn Brown, Art Editor
Jada Rumbaoa, 11 Junior Jada Rumbaoa’s snake tattoo is not meant to look as threatening as the actual reptile. For Rumbaoa, it holds a cultural importance to their grandparent’s Filipino culture. “In Indiana you can’t exactly connect with Filipino culture, so I thought it’d be a nice way for me to connect with a part of my heritage,” Rumbaoa said, “[The tattoo] is done in tribal [style], specifically Filipino tribal.” The Filipino national
flower, the Sampaguita, completes the snake tattoo. Rumbaoa designed the tattoo, solidifying its importance. “It makes me really happy that something I designed, something that’s so personal to me, is well-liked by other people,” Rumbaoa said. Rumbaoa’s second tattoo equally celebrates family, by commemorating their mother’s favorite insect, a dragonfly. “We got it together,” Rumbaoa said. “It was like a birthday gift.” To match, their mother got a ladybug tattooed in the same place in honor of Rumbaoa’s childhood nickname, ‘Jada Bug’.
Gavin Raff, 12 “Usually when you say you got a tattoo in Vegas, it’s bad, but the second tattoo I ever got was in Vegas,” senior Gavin Raff said. Although it was driven by spontaneity, it actually turned out to be one of his favorite tattoos. That wasn’t his only tattoo that required a bit of traveling, Raff has been tattooed in multiple states. “Most of [my tattoos] I get when I go somewhere. I’ve gotten one in Nevada, a couple in Utah, one in Colorado,” Raff said. “So it’s kind of like a memory for that place, too.” Raff has a total of 13 tattoos, most of them being on his legs.
12 Student Life
“Most of the [tattoos] on my legs are just from personal experiences or like struggles I’ve been through and are a reminder,” Raff said. He also honors his sister with a tattoo of her birth date on his chest and brings awareness to the issue of suicide with another tattoo on his wrist. “I have a semi-colon on my wrist,” Raff said “I’ve had family members commit suicide so it’s very personal there.” Rather than worrying about the permanency of the decision to get tattooed, Raff appreciates it. “It is just important to me because it’s permanent and it holds meaning,” Raff said.
