You walk into school on Monday after a long and stressful weekend, passing a student in a Kermit the Frog mask, another with vines taped to their shirt, and an uncanny look-alike of that old picture of Dwayne Johnson you had seen floating around the Internet at some point. But the few people in these costumes blend into the crowd of regularly dressed students, and you wonder if it was just a lack of sleep that caused you to see memes in real life. Then it hits you, it is Spirit Week.
This year, to get people excited for the Homecoming dance, student government held a spirit week. From November 4th to the 8th, there were five days of “spirit” and dress-up. Monday was meme day, Tuesday was twin day, Wednesday was extreme Webb Wednesday, Thursday was pajama day, and Friday was class color day.
Cayden Lazier (‘20) said, “I loved it! I really liked meme day because my friends and I could do it together… I liked being able to match with my friends to be able to creatively express myself.”
Similar to Theme Nights – but without the competition – this new dress-up event was meant to unite the classes and inspire overall school spirit. It was supposed to be a fun way to publicize homecoming, so that it could be more than just a one night event, and students could be excited for the celebration that student government spent so much time organizing.
Unfortunately, Spirit Week did not live up to its expectations. Participation was extremely low, either because people did not know it was Spirit Week or because they just did not want to dress up.
Jake Sharifi, WSC all-school vice president, said, “It was fun for me to participate in all the different days, but I think overall participation could’ve been better. I think better communication with the school would have made it turn out better.”
The event was not publicized during school hours through an announcement, and the first email regarding the event was sent out on the Friday before Spirit Week would be held. This short notice did not give students a lot of time to plan their outfits for the week.
Another issue some students found with the event was that there was no competition. For events like Theme Nights, the incentive to dress up was the chance to beat the other classes. Although there should not have to be competition and a prize for people to participate in school spirit, more motivation may have helped rally participation. Theme Nights already has a lot of hype because it is a long-lived tradition, so Spirit Week was at a disadvantage because students did not have any expectations.
Jake also said, “We are probably going to try to make better next year by having an incentive like a competition.”
Although there were some issues with this year’s Spirit Week, events like these are fun all-school activities that unite students outside of the classroom. This was the first Homecoming Spirit Week that student government has held, so there is still hope for the years to come. Now that students know about the event, they can be prepared when homecoming week rolls around again next year, and student government can make adjustments according to what did and did not go well.
