By Reece M. Krantz ’16
THE ROUNDUP
Generating school spirit is a wholesome art, and one that Brophy is rather famous for.
The spirit of a school, good or bad, is not a fortuitous one.
Whatever its character is, it can be traced back to a common cause or call.
It is neither spasmodic nor ephemeral; it comes as growth and persists relentlessly.
Too much school spirit can lead to an ultranationalistic approach to campus life, which can result in misbehaviors.
Too little and school is a lifeless gulag.
We must find a middle ground.
If school spirit is bad, it can be easily to attributed to the depravity of the students, except for a fact that in another school where there is equal depravity, there is good spirit.
The initial impression that someone gets as they walk into a school, I would argue, is the sense of school spirit.
When they walk into the main court of a school, they should be able to feel a certain pride that exudes a lively atmosphere.
Positive school spirit will give off a positive atmosphere, where people will enjoy the overall experience of the school.
This is very important because the more people are motivated and in are unison with their fellow classmates, the more efficient and behaved they are as a whole.
The opposite of this is negative school spirit or bad school spirit.
This kind of spirit gives off a bad impression to strangers who come visit the campus. Rather than motivating students, it saps more than it gives.
Positive and negative effects are both important, however.
We need a decent balance to help shift student attitudes to be more fulfilling to a school’s overall goal.
Too much, and spirit quickly loses it symbolic meaning of brotherhood and unison and becomes a massed frenzy that is incomprehensible and unorganized.
Too little, and the school becomes the prison some exaggerate it to be, with little creativity and support for fellow scholars and teachers alike.
It’s hard to tell what is more dangerous.
I suppose it’s up to your own relative interpretation of what you want a school or an idea to mean.
The middle ground is difficult to obtain.
It requires arduous maintenance and a subtle system of checks and balances.
Brophy is an example of one that seems to have a decent middle ground of the two extremes.
I would also contend that we have strayed to both ends in the past, but a strong community is a great equalizer in these cases.
In the expression Esprit de Corps we have a fitting and simple way to show and characterize school spirit.
This phrase helps embody as “the animating spirit of the collective body” and it is through this comprehension that we form a definitive definition of school spirit.
Too much or too little, school spirit is something that all schools must maintain in some form to be a great place communally and academically.
