The upcoming spirit week at Santiago High School begins March 13th. Many students anticipate this event as it is a week dedicated to uplifting the spirits of individuals and creating a more positive atmosphere around the school campus. The overall purpose of spirit week is to create unity and to allow students to engage in various days of dressing up that go according to the theme often chosen by a school leadership class. Starting this upcoming Monday, as posted on Santiago’s official Instagram page, the theme of this Spring Rally spirit week is Toy Story. From this year’s series of spirit weeks, it is known that seniors have been ranked low on the spirit board and so being a part of this year’s graduating class when this rally’s theme was posted, I asked other seniors to best provide insight as to why this may be.

I asked various questions that could gain perspectives as to how they feel and if there are other priorities that keep them from engaging in spirit week. “I don’t feel much about it because they are not that big of a deal to me and for me, it’s not really important” expressed one student.

In accordance with the question asking if they feel the spirit days are coherent with the fitting themes, thinking perhaps this could be a reason for the low rankings, they stated, “Yeah there are a few that don’t make sense with the theme and I don’t understand why they are there”. I then asked if they do participate, which days? The response was, “If I do, I only do the ones I like or can do because some of them I don’t have the necessities to dress up”.  Eunsol Ko, another senior attending Santiago stated, “ As a senior, I have more to study than the other classes. Also, I have to prepare for college and write essays for scholarships which makes it harder to focus on spirit week”. In response to my question asking “Having ranked low in spirit week, how does it make you feel?”, she stated, “ I feel disappointed in our class and me because I usually don’t dress up for spirit week since I always think everyone else is going to do it”. As spirit week is approaching, it can be important to emphasize that as freshmen and sophomores don’t typically bear the same responsibilities as seniors, they are able to put in more effort than upperclassmen. Another senior, Isaac Rodriguez who was interviewed, in response to the same question previously asked, stated, “Participating in the previous pep rallies over the past few years, I noticed that the class of ‘23 isn’t enthusiastic at all. I definitely saw it coming a mile away”. Adding onto that statement, “Also, if I heard it more verbally, I’m sure I would have dressed up more”.

Despite the best efforts of the school staff and student leadership classes such as Unity and ASB, seniors do have more to prioritize when moving forward onto the next chapter and tend to become less enthusiastic about the final year of high school which leads to freshmen and sophomores leading the spirit board.