SharpShOoten: Harvard Does Have Some School Spirit

One complaint that I hear voiced at Harvard is that we don't have enough school spirit. But I disagree.

Five years ago, when I began my college search, one of the most important criteria for me was a sense of school spirit and community. Coming from the South and having performed as the baton twirler with a high school band of 250 members, I was used to a lot of school spirit. On game days, athletes wore their team jerseys around campus. This is not to say that athletics reigned supreme at my high school; in fact, we were consistently below average in football and basketball. Yet there was tremendous school pride, and the games were packed with fans.

I visited Harvard and loved many aspects of the school - the diverse student body, the Cambridge area, and of course, the academics. But I was worried about school spirit. Several students told me that there was very little school spirit. And having visited Duke and Dartmouth a few weeks earlier, the response at Harvard to questions concerning school spirit was much less encouraging. No, Harvard students don't wear Harvard clothes, and no, the stands at football games are never sold out.

But after four years at this school, I know that Harvard has school spirit. A lot of it. The students who maintain that there is no school spirit are merely reflecting their own beliefs. They haven't been inside the stadium at a Harvard-Yale game, squeezed into the stands at Lavieties Pavilion for the Penn and Princeton basketball weekends or trekked to the Beren Tennis Center for the Harvard-Notre Dame NCAA first round tennis match. They haven't watched the crew boats race in the Head of the Charles, seen students throw chickens on the hockey rink in the middle of a Harvard-Yale hockey game or encountered the Harvard flag waving at water polo games. They haven't watched as Harvard annihilates Princeton in swimming meets, as the women's soccer team makes it to the NCAA quarterfinals and track star s Brenda Taylor and Dora Gyorffy set school records.

Not everyone at Harvard goes to the games on the weekends, but quite a few do. When the Harvard women's basketball team defeated Stanford in the NCAA tournament in 1998, all televisions at the school, at least those with cable, were tuned in. A large crowd of fans welcomed them home for the airport after the second round loss. Do you think Stanford's team would have had a welcome home reception after a second round loss?

Harvard also has is a sense of school spirit beyond athletic contests. Graduates of the college are extremely proud of their alma mater. Maybe they don't always wear shirts with a large

H-A-R-V-A-R-D across the center. But you ask them where they went to school, and they'll respond with pride. And, if there is any sporting championship in which Harvard is competing, they cheer for their school with the more vigor than most.

At times, school spirit is an unspoken understanding, and at times, embodied by naked running around the Yard. But whatever form it comes in, it is there. So, after four years at Harvard, I would encourage people to come to Harvard because of the school spirit.