School spirit: two words that can make or break a campus. School is back in session and cultivating campus pride is a high priority for the student leadership team.

Student leadership plans to implement multiple ideas to turn the desire for unity into a reality.

In an apparent jumpstart to this new school spirit, over 180 students participated in the third annual Night Rally on Sept. 1 at Woodward Park.

“Our level of school spirit is good, yet there is definitely room for improvement,” Josh Tosland, leadership adviser, said, “It is still early in the year and we want to try to maintain a good level of school spirit throughout the rest of our time together.”

Leasdership has many creative ideas for student events. Ideas for new activities include movie weeks, music Fridays, after events after sports games, ice-skating and perhaps a trip to Yosemite.

“Students are normally skeptical before school planned events,” Tosland said. “But we want students to be glad they came and have a really good time.”

Leadership’s goals for the Sept. 1 rally were to increase school spirit and encourage class interaction.

“The night rally was at Woodward Park,” Tosland said, “because it seemed to be the west venue for the activities. Students are often initially skeptical before school-planned events, but afterward, most are glad they came and really seemed to have a good time.”

On the night of the rally, students dressed in class-themed attire: freshmen as farmers, sophomores as soldiers, juniors in Hawaiian and seniors as cowboys.

As students gulped their sodas and munched on Oreos, an unspoken tension and competition began to rise among the four classes. Even playful joking and laughing soon turned sour and students appeared anxious to commence the competition.

A game of body-part-bingo served as the opening activity. Student body president Carson Belmont, ?05, called out multiple body parts in various quantities. Participants jostled one another in an effort to produce the requested body parts first.

Phrases such as “18 ankles!” and “We need 1000 toes!” could be heard between the scrambling and shrieking of competitive students around the sunset picnic area.

An amusing version of bobbing for candy bars was next. Following the directions of Belmont, several different students began the game by spinning around five times as their fellow classmates laughed and cheered.

While trying to regain their balance and composure, the spinning students were then expected to dunk their heads into tubs filled with soda and bob for loose candy bars.

For more information on the night rally, contact student leadership through Gilmore at [email protected].