School spirit, does our school fear it.

Does Bullitt East lack school spirit or is there a lack of proper planning of school events such as pep rallies?

Last Friday, Bullitt East had their first pep rally of the year and despite the success of the beginning of the pep rally, towards the end things got interesting and a little controversial.

Every class sat in their own section of the gym and it started just like any other pep rally: the cheerleaders did a couple cheers and the band played the fight song. Since Friday was Homecoming, Mr. Robert Troutman introduced the freshmen, sophomore, and junior representatives, and the senior king and queen nominees.

Troutman went from class to class seeing who could do East’s signature slow clap the loudest, which took up a majority of time.

At about 2 p.m., towards the end of the pep rally and school, the seniors seated right next to the doors by the parking lot started to migrate that way while the pep rally was still going on. Most of them were off the bleachers and standing next to the doors ready to leave, which led Mr. Mason to get on the microphone. He told the seniors that he was disappointed in their lack of school spirit and leadership, and how the freshmen and sophomores were showing more school spirit. Even so, when the bell rang, it was a mad dash to leave school.

So the thing everyone is wondering is, was it a lack of school spirit that caused the seniors to flock to the doors, or was it the fact that it was the end of a game day Friday?

Senior Connor Green who won Homecoming King said, “I think it’s the truth that we need to show up more as leaders but, I think that the whole school needs to take more pride in the school not just the seniors.” He also felt that students would probably be more into the pep rally if it was more student ran, but he still felt that Troutman held the students attention for the most part. His advice to help generate more school spirit would be to make the pep rally’s longer and earlier in the day then the students would be more excited and involved.

Freshman homecoming representative Zak Perdew also had some thoughts on the pep rally. He said, “If we had more time it would have been a lot better and if wasn’t at the end of the day, the last 10 minutes of school pretty much, then people would have been more into it.”

When asked about what Mr. Mason said Perdew stated that he had a “little bit of a chuckle because the Freshmen and Sophomores are the laughing stock of the school and I thought it was kind of funny that the Juniors and Seniors got put in their place for that little bit of time.” His advice to get some more school spirit would be we could have more of a variety of chants and that it would further improve our pep rallies.