Over the course of the year, we’ve had two pep rallies with one more soon to be on the way. The pep rallies were implemented to make Basis seem like a “normal” school, but overall a large number of students find these pep rallies to be more of a chore rather than the crowd pleasing activity the school was hoping for. But what made the pep rallies so boring and how can we fix it?
First of all, the pep rallies seemed to exclude the students because only a small minority of students were participating in the activities. The activities were fun in theory but they lasted too long and seemed to be unorganized. For example, in the most recent pep rally the dunk contest gave too much time to each contestant resulting in wasted time and leaving everyone feeling bored. It felt like the event in total was filler.
Students don’t look forward to pep rallies. While it is important to maintain school spirit, pep rallies have to be edited in order to be effective and exciting. One solution would be to include every student who wants to participate in the activities. Since there are a small number of high schoolers and even fewer that come to the pep rallies, this wouldn’t be hard. By subjecting high schoolers to the bleachers for a full hour of watching activities they can’t participate in; it makes students feel nonessential and insignificant to their school. This of course creates a disconnect between the school and the students halting any synthesis of school spirit, defeating the whole purpose of the pep rally.
Another problem pep rallies run into are when to have them and at what time. There was a huge gap in time between the first and the second pep rally. A good time to have them would be right in the middle of every trimester. Having them at the end of every trimester is a terrible idea because students are usually given the most homework and stress levels are at their highest so it would be unwise to place the pep rallies then. Nevertheless there doesn’t seem to be a single good time to have pep rallies, the altered school schedule we tried during the first pep rally was clunky and extremely hard to implement so we should stick with the 8th hour pep rally. However, students should be encouraged to go but shouldn’t be forced to go. In order to increase the students size the pep rally should be properly advertised weeks before.
Pep rallies are usually put on by schools who have lots of public funding, have clear cut school schedules for pep rally days, and have extensive equipment. But Basis doesn’t have all the necessary tools to put on a pep rally and it doesn’t have too. Basis can put on the pep rally that is most convenient and provides the most fun. Basis isn’t a normal school, so it shouldn’t have to conform to all the norms of a public school.
