Can school spirit reduce school violence?

It seems that as school spirit goes down, school violence goes up. Without activities to keep young people involved and connected to their school community, they will find other ways to occupy their time. Some of these can be negative. The question is: can school spirit make schools safer?

Senior Andre Hunt doesn’t think school spirit can reduce violence in our school. “We can’t reduce violence because you cannot control people’s actions. The people who want school spirit will participate and the ones who don’t, won’t,” said Hunt.

Freshman Camila Figueroa thinks everyone’s involvement is the solution to the problem. “School spirit can reduce violence because if we have everyone involved, they can get along,“ she said.

Junior Gideon Kapongo sides with Figueroa in keeping everyone involved. “With more school spirit, it could keep our student body busy and reduce violence,” he said.

If school spirit can reduce school violence, Urbana must take action.

“We can increase our school spirit by having a person who provides school spirit news, putting up flyers in the school and having more class color days,” said Hunt.

For Kapongo, ”We would improve our school spirit by having our students organize things and plan more events.”

Though students show spirit at sporting events, we need to keep the trend going all school year. Spirit in the every day, can lead to a safer school every day.