Photos taken by Caitlin Flood
Article written by Jessica Banasiak
This year’s Homecoming celebrations included a four-day Spirit Week, change wars during lunch periods, a dance on Friday night, and the crowning of the Homecoming king and queen at the Saturday football game against Voorhees. Sadly, the student body greeted these events with a giant yawn.
Mix-and-match day, class color day, character day, and Raider pride day were shrugged off by most students while the change wars were barely advertised and resulted in little to no participation. The Friday night dance lacked attendance by the underclassmen and crowds of students ditched the game after the crowning of the king and queen at halftime. Some students attempted to raise spirit by selling Raider Nation-themed T-shirts, sunglasses and wristbands, but this wasn’t enough to revive a dying tradition.
Ultimately, the future of Homecoming lies in the hands of the students. “If more popular, Homecoming would be a good way to meet people from other grades and even other people from my own grade I don’t already know.” said freshman Emma Jazcko.
Junior Stephanie Giaretta describes how she remembers Homecoming at her former high school in California. “For an entire week we would have different spirit days. On the Friday before the Homecoming game, we had a parade with floats that we had made together. Clubs walked with floats, and citizens voted on their favorite. On Saturday, we had the football game versus our biggest rival,” she said. “It brought school unity when all grades came together after school to build the floats. It brought our entire school hard-core pride.”
Unless more work is put into future Homecoming events, the pride our school claims it has will never be hard-core Raider pride—just a lame T-shirt that you’ll never wear again after the big game.
Political Cartoon by Joshua Knechtel