During our last “pep” rally a great question was asked by senior Jorjia Vawter; why do we interrupt school to have “pep” rallies to congratulate athletes on their performance that occurs outside of school, but have academic ceremonies outside of school for things that happen inside of school? The more you think about it, the less it makes sense to do things this way.

“Being that schools are academic in nature it seems backwards that athletic achievement ceremonies are forced upon the whole student body while academic ones are held after school,” Vawter said. Quite honestly, I couldn’t care less about how the golf team did in their season. I mean, if they did well, good for them, but I would rather not have to sit in the cramped gym with all of my smelly classmates and clap for them. I’d like to be doing homework in class so I don’t have to do it at work later that night. And to be blatantly rude, I don’t really care about other’s academic achievement either. But it makes more sense to me to replace athletic ceremonies with academics if we absolutely have to choose one to hold in school.

School spirit is always classified as going to football games and knowing everybody on the basketball team. But why? In other countries, they don’t even have school sponsored sports. Everything is through a separate organization. School is meant for academics and academics only, no baseball team to worship.

Some students, however, find the “pep” rallies as a nice break. “We already have so much academic work inside of school that it’s nice to recognize peoples athletic achievements,” senior Jennifer Meyer said. I do admit, we at least include some academic clubs into the assembly, but people have to be mathletes to be recognized. If they just did amazing on all their AP tests or got a great ACT score, we don’t clap for them, and I feel bad.

“A student’s peer group can be very influential, and I think that makes it all the more important to recognize academic achievement in a way that involves the school as a whole, not just whoever shows up to the academic ceremony after school,” Vawter said. “If we have time to recognize athletics and other after-school activities during school, then we can make time to recognize academic achievement as well.”