Winter Spirit Week

ANNOUNCEMENT (12/20/24 @ 5:00 PM):

We are extremely proud of Noah and Anthony for their participation in today’s activities at the pep rally. With that said, there were issues that need to be addressed before the next pep rally. Some of our classmates were being immature throughout the day. We need to make sure this does not happen in the future. Also, we want to think about how we can be legitimately competitive in spirit point events.

Behavior During Walk-outs

This is an issue that has always been present at pep rallies. We didn’t start it, but we are addressing it. Many students find the walk-outs boring and find it more worthwhile to complain about our clubs than participate in them. We are extremely lucky here at North Pocono to have a plethora of fun clubs, competitive clubs, and sports. Many of which are extremely successful in what they do. Our mock trial team is among the best in the nation. Our science Olympiad team is consistently in the top 10 in Pennsylvania. Despite these successes, many students haven’t even heard of these groups. One could argue that the last few football and basketball seasons have been unsuccessful from a championship standpoint, and yet they get more attention from students who don’t know about our academic competitive teams.

Attention needs to be refocused on the goals of the pep rally. Stop complaining that you can’t hear the announcements when you were just talking to the people next to you about how dumb it is that you had to show up today. The appropriate thing to do is to be quiet and attentive as clubs and names are announced, then clap and cheer for your classmates in that activity. At a minimum be quiet so your peers with friends in those activities can hear. The talking throughout the ceremony needs to stop immediately. Don’t be afraid to tell one of your friends to stop talking if they’re being disrespectful.

To the people who were spraying water in the front of the gym, we know who all of you are. We are disappointed in your immaturity and consistent bad attitudes. Just because you’re popular does not guarantee you a seat in the front rows. The entire first row is reserved for the officers and those who may be wearing a boot or have crutches that need to stay off the stairs. If we have empty seats, we will use it to put backpacks. From here on out, stay out of the front row.

Activities & Nominations

This, too, is an issue that is prevalent among all of the classes. So I wanted to inform the class how the process of getting nominated to these activities works. Doing this should bring to an end the constant complaints about our decision making.

The activities done during pep rallies are planned by the Student Council executive committee. Class officers like ourselves have little to no say in what the events are and what the rules will be. All the info we get comes from what the executives pass along to Tanner and what Tanner passes on to the other officers. Most times, the stuco execs leave out details that would affect decision making or they change things last minute. This has lead to ineffective decision making, like what happened with trivia today.

What happened today was the execs made a last minute announcement (last night at 4:47 pm) to have trivia people wear sneakers. Upon being informed of the need to wear sneakers, and probably the need to run, our choice for trivia (Abi Pabst) informed us that she could not do it due to injuries she sustained during the soccer season. Because of the executives’ last minute announcement, we were scrambling to find a replacement with just hours before it happened. Your officers have lives, just like you. We had to take time out of our schedules to scramble to find a new competitor because of the student council’s last minute change. This morning, we desperately contacted upwards of 30 people to see who could fill the role. Noah Melendez stepped up and volunteered to compete just in the nick of time. He told us he’d do his best, but he may struggle. When he went up to do it, he had a less than stellar performance. But unlike many of you, he is willing to do something he knew he wouldn’t be the best at in order to put a body on the court for trivia. It is disheartening and disgusting that we have heard people insult Noah and insult the officers for choosing him. He wasn’t chosen. He stepped up. He is a great person and a role model in our school, and you should remember this the next time we need people to compete.

Spirit Points Strat & Participation

On a lighter note, we also wanted to touch on our future strategy for spirit stick and other events that are for spirit points. Right now, as I’m sure you all know, we are trailing the other classes. Our intention is not necessarily to win spirit week. As freshmen, that would be a feat even we are probably not capable of. We just ask for simple participation. We do pick the people that compete in events, but we ask the class for its input. When we reach out asking for you to do an event, consider this. First, you’re a freshman. Don’t worry about embarrassing yourself because nobody from the other classes is expecting you to do well. Second, we want you. We didn’t pick your name out of a hat if we reach out to you first to compete in a specified event. We believe that your skills match the skills required for the task at hand. When spirit week points are at stake, we are trying to put the most capable members of our class on the court. We are not trying to embarrass anyone by competing them. What is embarrassing is when we don’t have anyone (or anyone who will perform well) to compete because you’d rather stay on the sidelines screwing around with buddies. Going forward, it is essential for you to really think about the class.

Now for the strategic part of this letter. We know that not everyone is going to jump through hoops to compete for the class, and we know that not everyone cares enough even to yell a few seconds for the spirit stick. Think about it, today we were just 4 decibels (less than 4%) away from the senior class for spirit week. We are louder than we have been at the last two pep rallies. So, we know winning the spirit stick (or at least not getting last) is an achievable goal. What we need is people who will yell and scream and clap louder to be at the front of the gym closer to the microphone. We need people who refuse to participate to be in the back where they won’t ruin our chances. We could also try to time the yelling so we have a good 5 seconds where everyone is screaming and nobody is breathing in. We will think about this as we move toward the next pep rally later this winter.

Conclusion

We appreciate you reading this letter. We know it was long, but there’s a lot that needed to be said. We know it was worded aggressively, but we are passionate about this. We don’t want to be the losing class of NPHS. We know that when we work together as a class and cooperate with each other, we will succeed. We as officers will always put forth competitive and determined people for every event that adds to our spirit week points. Our goals are achievable, but only with everyone’s support.

Signed,

Tanner Corkins (President), Damian Lanzoni (Vice President), Hailey Calkins (Treasurer), Allie Becker (Secretary), Reagan Gatens (Historian)