MHS needs more school spirit. Sure, we have team spirit days and even school spirit weeks, but they’re not enough to foster a feeling of school-wide pride and spirit. Are students actually proud to be a part of MHS? Are they happy for other sports teams’ wins? Is there any school spirit at MHS? I fear the answers to these questions for many MHS students are no.

Okay, so maybe I’m being a little melodramatic. MHS was rated the sixth best public school in New Jersey, and our football team has an amazing record and has been state champions for the last three years. The teachers here love to teach, and contrary to popular belief, the all seniors do not hate the all freshmen. Students at MHS know this and (hopefully) feel proud of their school. But what I’m arguing is that students need to do a better job showing this pride. MHS needs more school spirit.

Sports teams are spirited and have spirit days that team members participate in. Some teams have amazing spirit and show it with numerous enthusiastic spirit days. But this is more individual team spirit rather than school spirit. Additionally, many students that are not on a certain team do not even know if that team won their most recent game or not. That’s definitely not school spirit. Some sports teams don’t have team spirit at all – how can we hope for school spirit with that attitude?

MHS has spirit week. Isn’t that school spirit, you may ask? My answer to that is not enough. MHS only has one or two spirit weeks out of almost 40 weeks of school. That’s a very small time period for students to show their school spirit and get excited about MHS.

Even Spirit Squad has been more like “Drama Squad” lately. Girls are “calling” their partner as early as sophomore year (really? I didn’t even know what Spirit Squad was until a few weeks ago) and all sorts of drama ensue in the search for a partner. Besides the incredible sexism of this system, in many cases, it doesn’t really serve to foster school spirit anymore. Lots of times, girls get caught up in pursuing the dubious “honor” of wearing a guy’s name on her sweatshirt instead of genuinely wanting to cheer a friend on at a game and for the most part, the guys don’t even care who their partner is and think the whole thing is just stupid. To me, that doesn’t sound anything like school spirit. (For a great article focusing on this aspect of Spirit Squad, see “Keeping the Spirit in Spirit Squad” by Shira Buchsbaum right here on MDO.)

Don’t get me wrong. I love MHS and I believe we have the potential to have so much school spirit. Everyone rallies around the football team every year, knows their record, the score of the last game, and all the players. Why can’t we emulate that feeling with other sports? What if on announcements each day, the scores and/or results of each teams’ games from the previous day were announced. Sure, not everyone listens to announcements, but it’s a start. Maybe after hearing that the volleyball team won their last match, someone would congratulate a member of the team, who would be inspired to congratulate someone on another sports team. Another way to foster school spirit is to have more spirit weeks. Spirit weeks are a fun school-wide way to show spirit, and seeing everyone wearing their Class Clash colors or dressing in pajamas for the day can inspire other students to increase their school spirit. Last year, Spirit Week was a great success, with many students excited to dress up and show their school pride, so let’s give them more weeks to do that!