Spirit week receives mixed opinions

Nov. 18 marked the beginning of the first spirit week of the school year, as students donned mustaches and other forms of facial hair to dress up for Mustache Monday. The rest of the spirit week included Tuesday Mathletes vs Athletes, Western Wednesday, Disney Thursday and Formal Friday.

This year, the seniors won the Spirit Week competition with a total of 101 points, while the juniors had 88, sophomores 55 and freshmen 25.

Each day during lunch, students could go to the top of the quad steps to receive class points for dressing up.

The Spirit Commission made some changes to promote more class participation to combat lack of spirit the school has shown in past spirit weeks. When planning, the commission used student input for the themes instead of having the commission decide, and they got the word out early by creating a Facebook group and including reminders in principal Paul Robinson’s weekly emails.

“After looking at the general number of participants that reported to the commissioners for spirit points, [I’m] pretty impressed,” head commissioner Vivian Wang said. “The numbers were higher than our own expectations, so it’s a sign that we’re doing the right thing.”

However, senior Katie Truong said that this week didn’t go as well as other past spirit weeks because it seemed people didn’t want to dress up.

“There would be some really spirited people who dressed up every day, but other than that people didn’t really seem into it,” Truong said. “Maybe if there was a Pajama Day, then people would want to participate more.”

According to freshman Maya Prasad, participation was higher than she expected in the freshman class.

“The best day was Formal Friday because [we] dressed up in professional suits and walked around looking like lawyers,” Prasad said. “Also on Monday, people had drawn some crazy mustaches on their faces, and it was really funny to watch.”

Although there were mixed opinions about the success of this particular spirit week, it was still a chance to promote community among students.

“I think it is an excellent way to raise school spirit,” Prasad said. “Especially for freshmen, spirit week gives people chance to express [themselves] and show what we can do as a team.”

Wang said there will be more spirit weeks scattered throughout the year, but after mixed reviews of this first one, the goal still remains to increase participation.