Where is the school spirit and support at activities?

This archived article was written by: Kelsie Jo Knudsen

The week of Feb. 14-18 was Eagle Pride Week, sponsored by the Eastern Utah Ambassadors. The entire week was dedicated to school spirit, in hopes of promoting and bringing out real school pride. The Jennifer Leavitt Student Center was decorated, the rock was painted and each day was filled with various activities, including Valentines and poster making contests, a pride pageant, ending the week with men’s and women’s basketball games and the grand finale, a spirit stomp. Although this week was fairly successful, it was nowhere near where it should have been, this is due to a lack of school spirit and support.
I would dare say that each of us have seen or attended a major university sporting event, such as a basketball game. While watching this event you may have noticed the student section, every seat filled with loud obnoxious college students. They may not particularly like basketball, they are still attending the games with their fashionably incorrect matching shirts, faces painted ridiculous colors, screaming and cheering in hopes that their school’s team will come away with a victory. Now I realize that we do not have university status and therefore we do not have the amount of students that those institutions have, but we can still show that same school spirit and love for the College of Eastern Utah as those students of higher institutions show. It is all a matter of two things; attitude and involvement.
There have been many clubs and organizations on campus that have organized activities and tried to come up with ways to get students involved. For example, the Scream Team, a club organized for the sole purpose of raising school spirit. This club made t-shirts, provided activities, had a designated cheering section and sponsored half-time giveaways. Devin Keller, president of the Scream Team and Eagle Chair of ASCEU commented, “At the first game that we handed shirts out, we had a great response. But every game after that things gradually got worse. By the end of the season we had a few loyal fans still showing up to the games sporting their Scream Team attire, but the number of shirts worn was nowhere close to the number of shirts given away.” Despite all of their efforts they still had few fans that attended the activities, hardly any one wore their shirts to the games, and the noise level of the crowd was equivalent to that of a classroom.
We have a problem and there will never be a solution until you decide to do something. Everyone would love to see our school enthusiastic about games and activities, but nobody is willing to make a difference. It starts with us; we can begin by joining a club or becoming part of a committee. If you do not know how, go to the ASCEU booth in the student center and they will get you signed up. We can also make an honest effort to try to attend all activities and games on campus and doing so with a good attitude. I realize that the end of the year is almost here and we have all become burned out, but look on the bright side, we can soon get out of classes and enjoy our time off, so be excited.
At our school, there are so many things to get involved with. There is no excuse for ever sitting in our dorms bored out of our minds, even if we do live in Price, Utah. Our college experience is going to be what we make of it and even if we are only here in Price because of scholarship money and not by personal choice. We can still have fun and make the best out of our time spent here so that on graduation day we can look back on our time spent at the College of Eastern Utah and remember all of the great times we have had here in good old Price, Utah and yes, maybe even walk away a little sad.