At Binghamton University, our football team has been “undefeated since 1946.” Most students who go to BU get a good laugh out of this inside joke, since we all know that in reality, we have no football team. However, if we actually had a football team, would anything be different about our school spirit or campus atmosphere?
Potentially, but having a football team is not the be-all and end-all of school spirit.
Rather than bonding by joking about how our school has no football team, perhaps students can bond over going to sports games. Instead of students joking about our nonexistent football team with relatives and friends from home, they should talk about how successful our existing sports teams are doing.
Compared to other colleges and universities, our school spirit can be stepped up a notch, and it is not just our lack of a football team to blame. I remember going to a men’s basketball game with a friend at the Events Center my first night on campus after moving in freshman year. I was eager to start my time at BU with a fun activity where I could spread my school spirit. However, while I had a good time, I noticed that there were not many students in attendance, and there were more fans from the general public filling the bleachers.
Perhaps there were not many students at the game that night because not everyone had moved in for the semester yet at that point. Therefore, I decided to attend another men’s basketball game recently. However, there was still plenty of empty space on the bleachers.
According to BU’s athletics department, the Events Center can seat up to about 5,142 fans for basketball games, but there was nowhere near that number in attendance that day. Although I am unsure of the usual attendance at these basketball games and at other BU sports games such as soccer and lacrosse, I rarely hear students talking about going to a sports game to cheer our school on. I no longer have much of an interest to do so on a regular basis myself.
If BU set the tone differently for all of the sporting events and other events it has to offer, students would be more excited to go to these events to represent our school. Admittedly, the University does an efficient job of keeping students up to date with all of these activities via email with B-Line news and updates, and the B-Engaged calendar that students receive daily during the academic year. The information is accessible to students, but where can the source of motivation stem from?
Instilling more school spirit into incoming freshmen during orientation is key to establishing a brand new campus environment that is thriving with school pride. For instance, incorporating a general school chant to say at all of our sporting events and introducing it at orientation would be a good start. It can set an exciting tone for the rest of a student’s time at BU.
At Louisiana State University, freshmen learn their school’s football chant at orientation, as someone I know remembers from a few years back. Other schools such as Pennsylvania State University have their well-established expressions. For instance, Penn State constantly chants: “We are … Penn State!” When I bowl at competitions for BU against other schools, this chant is constantly heard when we play against Penn State, whereas we have no general school chant to say when someone on the BU team gets a strike.
It is true that students can take it upon themselves to have more school spirit, but a little extra push from the University is needed outside of sending email updates about upcoming events.
Brad Calendrillo is a senior majoring in English.