Editorial

Flipping through any number of 80’s era high school movies, one would come across many falsehoods. The actors and actresses who play roles much younger than they are, the seemingly empty hallways as the charming beaux chats up our leading lady at her locker, and the inaccurate amount of passing time between class periods. However, there is a lesser known erroneous element to these films; school spirit. No high school in modern America is that rife with preppy cheerleaders and hunky football players shooting cannons of confetti into a large crowd of screaming students. No average pupil covers their whole face with school colors or is pressured into going to all the football games. Especially, not Riverview.

The absolute lack of school spirit at Riverview High School is embarrassing. The only instances of school spirit are during homecoming week and pep rallies. Other than these events, our spirit is ghostly. The problem begins with our administration, who put the bare minimum into getting staff involved in school events. On extra early mornings, sightings of teachers show them dragging their feet into staff meetings and on late days, trudging towards the gymnasium for a rally. Hardly any administrators or teachers are found wearing shark merchandise showing up to sporting events. Instead they spend their time complaining about going to the scarce amount of pep rallies we have scheduled for our school year.

Those who hold the opposing view may say that any solutions have never been suggested. They’ll say that staff doesn’t have any time or intent to show pride for our teams, who usually end up losing anyways. And as a last resort, they’ll argue that pep rallies take up time that could be spent in the classroom. In response to these inane accusations, we say this: it shouldn’t have to be suggested that we put in more effort for our student body. School spirit leads to better grades and better morale.

Our Administrators are the leaders of our school. Who else could be responsible in leading us on the path to a more unified student body, higher grades, and better morale? It is the responsibility of the staff to schedule more school spirit related events and advocate for weekly spirit day wherein the teachers are required to wear their shark shirts, hats, pants, wristbands, or whatever else to show their pride. Only then will we improve our school spirit.