Some students say school spirit has improved over time due to increased student participation in events. The school has broken away from the stereotypical image of just an academic-based school, but it’s not an easy feat.
“SHS excels at academics,” said 2005 alumnus Kathleen Chan. “but it’s difficult to work up school spirit over a high API score.”
When Chan attended high school, she witnessed sophomores walking out in the middle of a rally. As they filed out of the gym, they grumbled about how rallies were always rigged so that seniors won every competition.
“There was the one time during Spirit Week that the sophomores tied the seniors in Powder Puff and there was a special assembly held to determine the winner,” Chan said. “During the rally the sophomores felt the seniors were getting much easier questions so they walked out.”
Rallies have not changed much in the past six years. The rally format has, for as long as students can remember, included a rally commission skit, student games and, to close it off, a class competition for the loudest cheer. But in Chan’s years at the school, there was a slight difference.
“They stopped allowing the ‘go home, freshmen’ chant because one of the administrator’s kids was a freshman at the time. It put a damper on friendly class competition,”she said.
According to assistant principal Karen Hyde, rallies used to be a part of the school day and classes were shortened to make room for them. More students attended them because it did not conflict with tutorial, when rallies are currently hosted.
There have been many changes for Homecoming celebrations in the past few years. According to Hyde, the school stopped using floats a decade ago. The Homecoming events now involve more students and parents in decorating the quad.
“We used to do floats at Homecoming. Parents weren’t involved and [students] could only have a certain number of kids doing things,” Hyde said. “They had to do a quad day and build a float so it was crazy for 20 or 30 kids [to complete] so we changed that so it wasn’t as overwhelming.”
Students were not as involved in Homecoming during Chan’s years in high school. It was not an event that everybody was crazy about or especially looking forward to.
“It wasn’t something that the whole school got extremely excited over,” Chan said. “Part of it was probably that the school’s football wasn’t great so it’s not like we had something to get excited for.”
Four years ago, the school held a daddy-daughter dance where girls would just have a night of fun with their fathers and similarly, a mother-son breakfast. The popularity of the daddy-daughter dance faded to the point where very few people attended.
“We used to do a daddy-daughter dance a hundred years ago. The population has changed and girls don’t want to dance with their fathers anymore,” Hyde said.
To get students more involved, school events are now publicized with the use of Facebook events. More students are notified this way rather than just the old-fashioned method of announcements and posters.
“The rally commission has definitely become more spirited,” said junior Connie Wang. “There has been more publicizing, which improved our school spirit.”