Having a father who works at the school, senior Easton Lewis has been attending Bowie football games since he was a kid. Growing up, he was amazed by the large crowds of spirited students which packed the stands to cheer on their team. However, he has noticed that school spirit today isn’t what it used to be.
Declining school spirit is something that has been noticed by both teachers and students alike. Whether it’s less students dressing up for spirit days, dwindling attendance at school events, or lack of excitement and participation, there are noticeable effects of losing school spirit.
“We used to have a huge student section,” Lewis said. “We would pack Burger out all the time. I thought it was crazy that one person or a group of people could pull a student body together to show up like that. When I was a k id, our spirit was at an all-time high.”
Student safety is a top priority for many administrators, but there are times when rules and regulations can get in the way of school spirit. According to the Austin Independent School District (AISD) stadium procedures, no confetti, noisemakers, or powder can be brought into sports venues. In addition to venue policy, Bowie administrators are often present in front of the student section at Bowie games to ensure that students are behaving in accordance with the student code of conduct.
“Spirit is still not what it used to be in the pre-COVID times for a couple of reasons,” history teacher and student council sponsor Alejandro Garcia said. “There were less rules pre-COVID which just let people just have fun. For example, at football games kids took their shirts off and painted their chest with Bulldogs, and they all threw water in the air or powder and everything else. But now, it causes people to slip, so we can’t throw water. There have been attempts to bring back some culture, some spirit, that I think are working. It just is going to take more student commitment to make that actually happen. I hope that after our current seniors graduate there will be people to say it’s okay to act crazy at a football game, to be loud and cheer for your team.”
Social media has impacted society in multiple ways. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that up to 95% of teens ages 13-17 use social media, and nearly 60% of those teens reported using social media every day. Whether on Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, or Facebook teens can spread photos and videos. One downside of this is that sometimes photos can be spread without people’s permission.
“Social media can affect school spirit if someone is participating, but they don’t want to be videoed or talked about,” senior cheerleader Genevieve Casas said. “If someone is videoed and posted on someone’s private story it might hurt their feelings or get around school that they were just being overly excited.”
One current trend on social media that could be influencing school spirit is being nonchalant. Merriam Webster defines nonchalant as “having an air of easy unconcern or indifference”, and explains that being nonchalant can show someone doesn’t care. This attitude can influence teens to put on an indifferent facade rather than being overly spirited.
“Everybody is just embarrassed to participate or doesn’t want to,” Casas said. “They sit down whenever we’re supposed to get
everybody to stand up. Maybe it’s better now that we don’t have phones during the school day, but I don’t know.”
BOWIE FIGHTS BACK
In an attempt to bring back school spirit the student council has tried new things such as creating more pep rallies for the spring
semester. However, they have also turned back time to bring back old classics such as the Homecoming dance, Bowie’s Got Talent, and Spirit Leaders. The senior Spirit Leaders for this year are Lewis, and Lola Armond. Their job is to show up to athletic events to support Bowie sports teams, and lead the student section.
“Being a spirit leader is really fun, it keeps you engaged, not only in the activity that you’re attending, but in the people there and how they feel about it,” Lewis said. “My favorite part is being able to show up and know that the people that I’m supporting appreciate me coming out. I’ve had people come up to me for football games and like, say, thank you for showing up. They’re my friends and they know I’m going to show up, but it’s not just me, but me bringing everybody to the games.”
An area of school spirit in which Bowie shines is celebrating teachers. Multiple groups at Bowie have taken initiative to recognize teachers which they believe have a positive impact on the school. The Silver Stars dance team recognizes a teacher of the week, student council recognizes monthly Socrates Award winners, and members of the Bowie instructional support team recognize a monthly Top Dawg. In addition to this there is also monthly recognition for teachers within different departments, such as the CuTiE for the
Career in Technological Education (CTE) department.
“One of the reasons why we started in student council our Socrates Award is because it recognizes and honors teachers for all their hard work,” Garcia said. “There’s a lot of ways to recognize the hard work the staff does, and no matter what anybody says, it makes you feel good if you’re being honored by somebody for your hard work. It can be a big motivating spark that helps you keep going. It’s important to recognize teachers, and I think we can even increase that to other groups that recognize teachers for whatever reason, because teachers work hard, and celebrating that builds morale, builds spirit, it builds ownership of being a teacher at this high school.”
Another way in which Bowie creates a spirited school environment and maintains a positive campus culture is by celebrating
students. Almost every day on the morning announcements students are acknowledged for their performance across multiple fields, most commonly in the form of game or competition results. In addition to this, every year there is a Trustee award ceremony to celebrate students with outstanding grades and attendance, and there is a Who’s Who Award which acknowledges student impact on campus. One new addition to Bowie’s culture of celebrating students can be seen displayed on the wall outside history teacher Chris Simons’ class as he highlights a student of the week from his history classes.
“I’ve been doing student of the week for seven years,” Simons said. “I take things that kind of characterize a student and I’ll turn a little Bulldog into them, so they have their own personal Bulldog as a way of showing my appreciation for them. It’s a way to recognize that they’re doing awesome things. I think teachers could do a better job of recognizing students. On the announcements, we really only hear about athletics or UIL aligned things. If we made some time to just highlight students that are doing good things that would be a really good thing.”
CALLS FOR CHANGE
One aspect of school spirit in which Simons, Garcia, Lewis, and Casas all agree could use some improvement is the spirit day themes. For the past few years the themes have remained stagnant, always featuring camo, pink out, black out, tropical, and holidays. Even students newer to Bowie have recognized that the spirit day themes don’t drum up as much excitement as they could.
“Sometimes the spirit week themes are kind of boring so maybe having more fun themes could be better to get people to dress up more,” sophomore Harper Carlisle said. “School spirit is important because it builds community in the school and makes things more enjoyable.”
With all the stuff students have drawing their focus on a daily basis, it can be hard to remember or put time into something like school spirit. One way to counteract this is by creating rewards or incentives for school spirit. An example of this idea can be seen in the upcoming student council plan to Blue out Bowie in which they are offering cookies to students who wear blue on April 24.
“Other than just encouragement, I’m not sure if there’s been anything specific pushing to bring back spirit, other than Bowie grads like myself that have said ‘hey, we got to bring back some of that fire and that excitement that used to be around’,” Garcia said. “I know we floated an idea of having a point system where students check in at the games and earn a certain number of points for some sort of reward.
That takes a lot of logistical thinking, but we need ways to get students in today’s generation to just want to have fun at their school, when sometimes their school is not the coolest thing they can do.”
Members of the Bowie student body have the power to impact school spirit by participating and sharing their ideas. Garcia would
like to emphasize to students that they should make the most of their high school experience, and if they have ideas for school spirit improvement they should share them with people such as himself, cheer or dance coaches, Bowie administrators, or student council members.
“You only get one shot at high school, and it’s so important to have a good high school experience,” Garcia said. “One way you could do that, among many ways, is to just let yourself have fun with your friends as teenagers, and that’s where I think school spirit comes into play. There’s so much to cheer for at the school. There’s so much fun we can have if people just wanted to do it, versus being afraid of what they’re gonna look like on social media. That didn’t exist when I was in high school, people just lived in the moment. We can get back to that somehow.”
