Spirit indifference is a rising issue that is worrying to Champe staff. Throughout the years, students have shown more apathy towards school spirit.
Champe student participation with school spirit and events has been on a decline. In previous school years, student involvement was excessive, but has seemingly been decreasing throughout the years. The lack of involvement from students has been concerning staff members as there is seemingly no reason for this.
“There have been fewer students attending games this year, than previous years especially for the basketball games,” counselor Samantha Girardi said. “There are many more Champe students who attend football games.”
At sporting events, Champe students have failed to show up and support their teams. For popular sports like football, there is better student attendance at the games. However during recent winter games, stadiums have been progressively getting more and more empty as fewer students attend these games. Bleachers are only filled with parents, a few staff members and cheerleaders. Champes’ Varsity boys basketball teams are ranked 352nd in the state, which is very low compared to nearby high school basketball teams such as Paul VI which is ranked 2nd in the state and Freedom that is ranked 146th in the state. This could be a reason why students don’t find it important to attend winter games.
“I would say that many students are interested in after-school events,” Girardi said, “but when the time comes, they end up going home.”
Champe students also fail to show up to theater and musical productions. Champe’s theater production tries hard to promote their shows.They have even chosen more recent and popular plays such as “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “The Little Mermaid” in hopes of making students more interested in attending these shows. Regardless of their efforts, these productions do not gain the attention or attendance of students. Champe SCA also struggles to gain involvement of students during spirit weeks and other school events.
“About 20% of students participate in the spirit dress out days,” SCA Co-Sponsor Natalie Hudson said. “As the year has gone, student indifference has grown.”
Champe students have also been lacking school spirit during Spirit Weeks following low attendance to after-school events. Champe SCA tries hard to come up with fun and interesting themes that students will participate in. From fun themes like neon out to dressing as your favorite toy. SCA advocates for these events through daily morning announcements, posters, frequent uploads on Schoology and slideshows presented during weekly advisory; SCA even goes as far as to promote Spirit Week and school events through social media platforms, like Instagram and TikTok, in hopes of peaking student interest. These interactive efforts seem to be of little use because, on average, SCA TikTok videos get around 100 to 200 likes. Showing that students are interested but not enough to participate in school activities.
“Not many students are interested in Champe events,” sophomore Deeyana Pandey said, “because they are often not entertaining and lack energy.”
In correspondence with students lacking when participating in Spirit Week, students also lack attentiveness when it comes to pep rallies. Pep rallies are meant to encourage school spirit and pride. SCA tries to make pep rallies enjoyable by playing engaging games and popular music. However this approach seems to fail as spirit is on a continual decline. This seems to not be the best approach to fix Champe’s spirit issue. Many students reason that it is just hard to follow what is happening at pep rallies as the games are all over the place, and are overall an unorganized event. Furthermore, it is simply difficult to hear the announcers because of the poor microphone quality and the speakers playing music too loud.
“Everything about the formal was really unappealing,” Pandey said. “I didn’t like how there was so much stuff and the VIP sections were too much.”
Student lack of interest in-school events has also caused cancellations of student-centered events. In response to student disregard for this year’s winter formal was canceled due to not enough students buying tickets. SCA tried multiple times to encourage students by talking about it over morning announcements and having a fun presentation about the formal during advisory. These endeavors were informative about when the formal was held, how to buy tickets and the layout of the formal. Though these efforts did not work in favor of SCA as students felt like the formal was just too much and wasn’t really appealing.
“I have been told that our students like to see something before they act on it,” Hudson said. “I feel like they couldn’t envision the event and how it was different from prom and homecoming.”
