A student enters Freshman Campus during homecoming spirit week, and he notices that nearly everyone is participating in “everything but a backpack day.” The same thing doesn’t apply when he enters his sophomore year at Upper Campus. Only a handful of kids are participating, and none of them are seniors. He can see that school spirit is abundant at Freshman Campus, but dies down to nearly nothing at Upper Campus. School spirit should get better as students become older, and it’s time for seniors to step up and be school spirit leaders.
As years have gone on, school spirit has seemed to have died down. This could be for a multitude of reasons, and one glaring reason seems to be that the majority of students are not motivated to participate. If upperclassmen would serve as better role models for school spirit and freshmen would continue their participation when they get to upper campus, this issue could be resolved.
“I think that freshmen seeing upperclassmen participate in school spirit will help get freshmen more involved even in separate schools because they might see other people doing it and feel that they are a part of something,” Dyland Castaneda, a freshman at MCHS, says. Seniors not participating in school spirit days and rallies is discouraging the underclassmen who participate, which ultimately results in their classes participating even less. This then creates a domino effect and school spirit becomes almost nonexistent. When the underclassmen see seniors or other kids participating, they are less self-conscious about dressing up for spirit days or participating in the spirit rally games.
When attending spirit rallies, it can be seen that as the grade level sections on the bleachers go up, the amount of kids sitting and participating decreases. There have been a number of times where the senior section has been less than half full, with most of the absent students fleeing through the front doors as soon as they get the opportunity. This isn’t setting a good example for students, since many begin to look forward to the day that they too can drive off as soon as they get wind of a spirit rally. In order for the sentiment behind school spirit to change, the way upperclassmen show their school spirit needs to improve.
Freshmen are very engaged in school spirit compared to higher grade levels. “When it comes to spirit weeks, most of the current freshmen participate and are engaged,” says Social Science Division Head Sean Sterner. When going to freshman campus, it can be seen that many kids participate in these kinds of events, but it’s rare to see anybody participating at upper campus. The reason why this participation ceases when students step foot into upper campus is because they don’t have anyone to look up to, since no one is leading them in school spirit. In addition to not having anyone to look up to, incoming sophomores are trying to adjust to Upper Campus, which can push school spirit down the list of priorities. If seniors and other upperclassmen started to be positive examples in school spirit, there’s no doubt that more freshmen would continue to show their school spirit during the rest of their years at MCHS.
“I think that the transition is really tough on a lot of students, academically, socially, and culturally. It’s their third school in three years, so on top of learning a new building and staff for the third year in a row, they’re also expected to be on the same level spirit-wise as the rest of the classes,” says Mitchell Stengel, MCHS’s director of student activities. “We’ve seen a lot of really spirited Freshmen classes fizzle out their sophomore year because of the pressures of the Upper Campus.”
The common excuse that many seniors make is that senior year is the busiest one yet, preventing them from putting effort into school spirit and activities. However, this is far from true. Many seniors end up taking more electives, standardized testing falls behind them, and all they need to do for the rest of high school is keep their grades up. Freshmen through Juniors spend most of their time preparing for standardized tests, and even more so just trying to adjust to high school life. Really, they don’t have as much to worry about in the present moment compared to the rest of the classes. This means that the seniors have plenty of time to spend focusing on leaving a legacy by boosting school spirit and serving as role models than they let on.
A student exits Upper Campus on his last day of senior year, but he does so with some guilt. He wishes he could have participated in more student activities and shown more school spirit while he still could, but now he won’t get the chance. He hopes that the same won’t happen to next year’s seniors, but deep down, he knows it won’t happen if students aren’t motivated to show pride in their school by their upperclassmen.