The Sophomore Voice:

The fading colors of school spirit

School spirit and traditions fall short at Rider. Can you count the number of times you’ve seen our student body swimming in a sea of cranberry while school spirit is roaring in full effect? You can’t count any? Funny, neither could I. Are students just confused as to what school spirit is? It’s certainly not wearing sweatshirts advertising other universities.

Princeton is down the road. Stanford is on the other side of the country — we’re in Lawrenceville. If you walk around other campuses, you’ll find that students are proudly displaying their love for their own educational establishments, not promoting other colleges. We should be proud that we’re Rider students.

I know not everyone will come to our basketball games wearing face paint and waving banners while chanting endlessly, but people should at least come wearing a cranberry-colored shirt.

Are the students entirely to blame for the lack of school spirit? We have a good handful of traditions that we celebrate every year, but what does it show students when some of those traditions are taken away? Where did homecoming go? And are spring flings dead forever? Why should students continue to support events that won’t be a good idea by next year? How are the students supposed to identify with a school whose traditions, color and symbol are always changing?

Cranberry is our school color, but you wouldn’t know that if you walked into the school book store and found yourself greeted by t-shirt colors ranging from pink to black. Is pink the new cranberry? Furthermore, I think a lot of students are confused as to what Rider’s official symbol is. Are we just “Rider University” in bold steel lettering, or is there a Rider tree accompanying our school’s name? The portrayal of this university name goes beyond actual symbols and lettering. It is more about the essence of what our school is and what it means to the students.

If you do not have the love and support of the student body, what do you have? Sure, we have a mascot, but that is only half the battle. Getting students to rally around some sort of tradition is more at the root of the problem. The student government is holding a Rider Rally for a major basketball game. Will students and the administration stand behind this new shot at a Rider ritual, or will it just be another leaf falling off our tree of tradition? We need the campus community to stand by this and everything that happens at Rider. There are so many hard-working students and staff members who try to make things possible, but there is a fault somewhere along the path.

If something cannot be done for the Rider class of today, hopefully something will be instilled for the Rider class of tomorrow. Sooner or later, something needs to be set in stone, or school spirit as we know it will wither away with some past traditions.

—Kim Fleming