By Cassie Dugan
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The crowd was raging. It was August 14, the first all-school convocation of the year, and there was no holding back the class of ’10 from showing everyone what they were made of. The spirit radiated from each screaming senior. But for Sunny Huang, senior and speaker of the House, trying to speak over a thousand screaming seniors was not easy. “At the time I felt like it was (disrespectful) because I was trying to talk in front of 4,000 kids and I was already very nervous,” Huang said. However, she also said that looking back on the situation, she thinks the seniors were just excited and trying to show everyone that they could be spirited.

But all the excitement and energy created a situation that the administration felt the need to address with the Class of ’10. Principal John Williams held the seniors after the event to remind them of certain class spirit expectations. Our expectations have always been that school spirit is exactly that- school spirit. School spirit, in my opinion, has always been about being positive. What we don’t want, and this is what I explained, is for someone to have rude, inappropriate or unsportsmanlike behavior and wrap that around school spirit,” Williams said. “From time to time it’s a thin line between having fun and being obnoxious.”

That line that exists between the two behaviors has been tested so far this year, resulting in a few suspensions. This generates a question of what exactly the rules and limitations on spirit are. The conflict between how to students want to show their school spirit, and how administrations say it acceptable behavior has created a divide.

Assistant Principal Amy Skeens-Benton acted as one of the administrators who helped restore order among the seniors at the convocation. She said that part of the problem was simply manners. While some students were cheering and showing school spirit according to the rulebook, others were displaying spirit in a way that has been deemed inappropriate by the faculty and administration. “Unfortunately, you have kids there who don’t really care about school spirit and are just there to be obnoxious, and that’s where the distinction is. Some kids are really not there to be supportive or helpful. They were throwing papers at one another, wouldn’t settle down when they were supposed to, and frankly just needed a lesson in how to behave.”

Deanna Daly, Wild Bunch co-president and senior, said she thinks that the administration is expecting more order this year, though. “In reality, we try to do the best we can but with it being senior year and everyone is excited, it is kind of hard to limits on what you can and can’t do,” Daly said. “I’m the same age and same status as everyone in all these clubs and things so I don’t feel like I have the right to tell people to cool it or calm down.”

The verbal warning the Class of ’10 received was the first in recent memory. This gives rise to the idea that the administration has altered its expectations. Regardless of this, Skeens-Benton and Williams agreed that expectations have not changed at all this year.

One thing that has changed, though, is the existence of an all-school spirit group named the Hound Pound. The Hound Pound is open to all grades and is a spirit organization much like Big Game or Wild Bunch. Now, with the presence of this all-inclusive spirit club, this year is serving as a guinea pig year. This year will help determine whether Hound Pound will unite classes and eliminate harmful class competition or incite more rivalry, especially between seniors and underclassmen.

Daly said she thinks Hound Pound is a great idea. “Wild Bunch and Big Game are so specific on senior girls and senior boys and Hound Pound gets everybody else involved. So it’s good for everyone because then freshmen and sophomores and juniors can feel like they’re just as important.”

Representatives from both Wild Bunch and Big Game have made it clear that there will be a definite distinguishing factor between the groups, though. Certain sporting events will be “given to” each of the groups, so that all outings have fans but that equal representation among all three spirit groups can be achieved, as well. Both Daly and Big Game member said that seniors probably will not feel threatened by Hound Pound, but that it will be mainly an underclassman club.

Big Game and Wild Bunch, according to Skeens-Benton, are technically a part of Hound Pound. Because of this, Skeens-Benton said she thinks that class-targeted chants such as booing freshmen should not occur. “The seniors are the leaders of the school, if anything they should be cheering on the freshmen,” Skeens-Benton said. “They are leaving behind a legacy and should be positive role-models by encouraging the freshmen. The booing is not useful. It’s not respectful.”

Booing and other class-specific chants are some of the expressions of spirit that students and faculty have a differing opinion on, and it is one of the traditions that has not officially been deemed as acceptable or not, further blurring the line that rests between the two.

“It’s always a touchy situation when you try to bring a lot of kids into one area,” Williams said. “There is a time when throwing paper up in the air maybe be perfectly fine. There’s a time when yelling and screaming may be perfectly fine. Obviously if you’re doing crowd surfing and other things that are dangerous, that’s never perfectly fine. But it’s not about a specific thing. It’s about a realization and stepping back to say, ‘What is our purpose here?’”

Unlike most rules and regulations, limitations on class spirit and appropriate behavior are not listed in a place where students can easily access them, such as the Pathways.

This is because according to Williams, determining what is and is not appropriate is a situational thing and cannot easily be divided into two categories. “I would not want to say that screaming is unacceptable at a convo because there are times when I will scream at a convo,” Williams said. “We really rely on people just using good common sense. I think it would be offensive to you folks for us to say ‘In a convo when someone else is talking, please listen.’ So there won’t be anything in the Pathways about behavior during a convo.”

In order to combat the excessive and potentially unacceptable energy, barricades will be moved back for the upcoming all-school convocations and other measures will be taken to subtly control the crowd.”

“We give a lot of freedom to you guys. We trust you guys, we trust you a lot. And every year, you’ve lived up to that trust, and not because there was something in the Pathways, but because you as a student body respect what we are doing here,” Williams said. “And that is the unbelievably great thing about Carmel High School; we don’t have to live by the Pathways.”