By MICHELLE WILLSON
Columnist
What really is “School Spirit”? Varsity.com states “To many students, school spirit is a sense of pride shown by those who feel a strong connection to their place of learning and the people in it,”
School spirit to me is much more. It’s not only a sense of pride in your school, but also a feeling a belonging in your surroundings, like a sense of community. To build relationships like that is tough especially when it involves over 2,000 people. In highschool the easiest way to reach a large amount of people was school sponsored events.
I believe that having an event like spirit week would help re-spark the fire a school spirit on campus. All through high school Spirit Week was one of the most look forward to weeks of the year. A week where most students are excited to go to school because it is not just going through the motions of a normal school day. Spirit week helps boost school pride and moral around the school in general, it gives people a sense of pride for their school and community.
In high school, I was in a lot from Cheer, StuCo, Show Choir, Theatre and Honor Society. I went to most of the games and I went to every school dance. In Student Council one of our biggest problems was how do we get students to have more school spirit. One of the answers we came up with is dress up days. All through out spirit week we selected themes for each of the days. From odd days like “Favorite superhero day” to normal days like “red and white day” (our school colors.).
During Spirit week my high school also put on different class competitions that focused on different aspects from athletic skills all the way to video games. We wanted to be able to include as many people as possible. My Schools most popular activities were Castles, Lip Sync battles and Super Mario Bros Brawl Competitions.
When students feel a sense of efficacy, they tend to be more involved, more in tune with the great opportunities which exist on their campus.” stated a female principal verbatim from a survey conducted by Varsity Brands (Varsity.com).
Having more outlets to help boost school spirit here at Northwestern would not just impact the students. It would also be a great opportunity for the different clubs and organizations on campus to be able to work together to put on events.
The National Federation of State High School Associations stated “In addition to showing support for their school, high school students with “school spirit” perform better academically, are more engaged in social and civic matters, and are happier in general than their less-spirited peers.” (NFHS.org)
Everyone can use a boost in school spirit every once in a while. Studies have even shown a higher school spirits in most cases ment better grades. An increase in school spirit will not harm anything so the pros definitely outweigh the cons.
It may be juvenile, but I propose we add a spirit week. That should include things like dress-up days and class competitions. It is not only to support school spirit, but with students from every group, who do not talk or interact, dressing up like each other It gives the school a stronger sense of unity. It would be a nice change of pace during the school year.