South Students Should Not Have to Attend Pep Rallies

Katelin Schweitzer

Pep rallies are great if you care about school spirit; it can be a great time for a school to be united and get excited about an upcoming game.

Students who love pep rallies should feel free to go and have a great time. I am absolutely not trying to discourage students from attending.

Students who do not want to be there should not ruin it for students who want to be there. By having students who want to attend, students may feel more comfortable with showing their school spirit and not embarrassed by the people around them who are just sitting there.

All four years of high school, I have absolutely dreaded going to pep rallies; I am easily anxious, and there are way too many people so it can be super overwhelming. I have gone to every pep rally; and each time, I have felt uncomfortable and out of place at most of them. 

Since I am now an upperclassman, I feel bad for not being excited. But, faking excitement for something I do not support is not an easy task, especially after a draining school day.

I understand the administration wanting our school to feel like a community; but if only certain people are being recognized, people who do not fit in that category may feel ostracized. South should care about supporting all students, so why can’t we support everyone?

This is not about me being against sports; teams here at South are not all supported to the same extent. When has there ever been a pep rally focused on our swim team, soccer teams, golf teams, tennis teams, or cross country teams?

Every year I have been in high school, there has been a form to fill out about how the school is personally affecting people, one of the questions has something to do with whether or not the student feels supported by their teachers. Are those responses actually addressed and has the administration been trying to make more of students feel supported?

By keeping the pep rallies and the importance of pep rallies focused on certain groups of people, it seems like the school does not care about how all of its students feel. 

Encouraging every student to pursue what they enjoy and make our school proud is something that I can be supportive of, but that is not what is happening at a pep rally.  There is a level of inequality when it comes to supporting our student body.

I am sure there are even more ways to recognize more of the student body. I want to challenge the administration to try harder at this and produce actual results. 

Unless this is going to change anytime soon, pep rally attendance should not be required.

Students who are able to leave, if they drive or have people who are willing to take them home, should be allowed to leave. 

For students who take buses, there should be a monitored room to spend time in, maybe the auditorium. Teachers who are not planning on attending the pep rally could be there to make sure nothing crazy happens. 

Pep rally days could be viewed as early release days with the option of going to a pep rally after school or not. On PowerSchool, South notifies students, parents, and guardians ahead of time about early release; the same could be done for pep rallies to put parents at ease when coordinating rides.

I understand there is a safety issue with not knowing where students are located, if something were to happen and staff would not know where students were, that would be a huge problem. That issue is already present since there are students have been consistently skipping already.

If students have the freedom to choose, having that choice will make it clear that the school respects what students prefer instead of forcing them to attend pep rallies.