Last semester, this page repeatedly urged Student Union to “step up” and take an activist role in governance.
Apparently they heard us loud and clear.
It has come to the editorial board’s attention that several SU executives have begun the early stages of an effort aimed at boosting attendance at sporting events in order to improve what they perceive as a deficiency in school spirit.
Just as a president’s political power is often gauged from his ability to generate votes for his programs in Congress, much of society measures school spirit by the drawing power of a university’s sports teams. Clearly, from this perspective, WU’s level of spirit is resolutely dismal – even more so with a women’s basketball team that came within eight wins of a record breaking winning streak spanning three years.
And in this context, we sympathize with SU’s concern: spirit is important. It is how we show our satisfaction with where we are. Spirit is a manifestation of youth, satisfaction, and above all, joy.
Perhaps the reason why sporting enthusiasm has developed into the single gauge of spirit that it has become is due to the visibility involved in competing against other schools. But the premise of enthusiasm for sports is much the same as enthusiasm for any other student enterprise: respect and support for fellow students hard at work.
In this sense, WU has just as much, if not more, spirit than any other school. Our spirit,like our students, is diffuse in nature. Spirit WU-style is more cultural, philanthropic and intellectual than sporting. And as we conceive of it, no less valid.
For an example, simply recall last fall’s Diwali, a cultural celebration of India put on by ASHOKA. Tickets sold out in a record time, less than two hours. Even when another show was added to allay demand, those tickets also went like wildfire. WU student support and enthusiasm for this event has become a campus tradition: it has become a way in which we show our spirit.
The enthusiastic attendance of Thurtene every spring has similarly become entrenched as a campus manifestation of spirit. The Thurtene Junior Honorary plans the oldest student run carnival in the nation for months and participants put in hours of backbreaking labor to create breathtaking facades and engaging plays. And every year, the campus turns out with support and enthusiasm, both for the efforts of our fellow students and the philanthropic enterprise at which this event aims. Once again, this is WU spirit.
And finally, last semester’s Strong Brew demonstrated WU students’ support for intellectual dialogue. Billed as “Conversation and Coffee,” the event featured a discussion between a priest, a rabbi, an agnostic and a biblical scholar on the nature of the relationship between faith and morality that packed Holmes Lounge.
In short, WU students show their support and enthusiasm for student enterprise, namely our spirit, in a number of manifold ways: cultural, philanthropic, intellectual (which is to say nothing for the electricity that grips this campus the week of W.I.L.D.). And in order to truly represent us, SU needs to respect this way in which we choose to show our pride. They must stand up for students’ vision of WU, not fashion the school as they would have it.
Make no mistake: WU student-athletes work extraordinarily hard, and we acknowledge that it is unfortunate that they are not better supported. However, not being a terribly significant student concern, we oppose the expenditure of SU resources to increase sporting enthusiasm. Efforts to foster increased support for student athletes are more appropriate to the Athletic Department than to SU. For if SU is to truly “step up” and take on an effective activist agenda, it must be on behalf of the students as we are – not as they wish we were. And as we are, we do have spirit – albeit unconventional – and it is no less valid than that of a football powerhouse.