As the fall season continues, school spirit seems to be one of the missing components to our school. With each pep rally it seems that students are starting to care less and less about involvement.
One example of the absence of school spirit is pep rallies. Many people choose to spend their pep rally time in the cafeteria. This is a major example of people not being interested or excited in school events at all. The people that do go to pep rallies tend to spend their time sitting down or not engaging at all. Many people may find that pep rallies are overall unappealing and unnecessary. One could say that the students are missing the point of the pep rallies. Pep rallies are to encourage our football team and uplift them for a good performance.
From observation it seems that the freshman class are the biggest contributors to the lack of school spirit. The class seems uninterested and possibly intimated by the upper classmen due to being in a new environment.
The last main point that can be provided to go along with lack of interest in school pep rallies and school spirit overall is that most of the student body is unfamiliar with the alma mater. This may be due to the fact that it is not encouraged enough or spoken about to students. It could also be that students believe that they have better things to be doing with their time rather than to be learning the alma mater.
Another big example we can see is the lack of interest in spirit week. Spirit week is a tradition among many high schools to bring the student body together and make long lasting memories with friends. Not only that, it gets students and staff excited for the Homecoming football game and dance. However, this year in particular, very few students participated in the dress up days. This also goes to show that students seem to be unintrigued and indifferent to the whole purpose of spirit week.
Lastly, the student section on Friday night football games seem very unenthusiastic about the football game. While we do see students dressing up for the games, the energy they bring is very dull. Students tend to just stand or talk to their peers while watching the football games instead of hyping their team up. If someone wants to make hype videos of the student section the students have to be told to chant or act hype which they should already be wanting to, do on their own.
There are multiple ways facility can encourage more school spirit, such as making pep rallies not as repetitive, encouraging students to learn their alma mater and teach the reason behind the alma mater and possibly even going as far as finding better ways to showcase our mascot, which could simply be a student willing to get a costume and dress up to attend pep rallies, athletic games and any other school events they might be necessary. A mascot would gain the attention of many students, especially if said person posing as a mascot is very entertaining.
All in all we hope to see the student body more proud of their school and be able to look back on memories of a school that was united and have our Alumni proud of being a GC rebel.
