I wanted to give a student’s perspective with regards to Homecoming/ school spirit/ powderpuff cheerleading ending. After talking with many students, the following is what I feel need to be said.

Upon reviewing a video of the performance, I believe that 100 percent of what occurred during the performance was “appropriate.” (During practices, we had a teacher supervising to “make sure that the whole dance is appropriate.”) I had to force myself to look specifically for the “rear ends rubbing up against the front of others,” before I debatably saw it. Even if one claimed that this did happen, this only equated for about a second (less than .01%) of the performance. If this did happen, it is NOTHING compared to two years ago when three young men were intently licking a sledgehammer. What I do not understand is why this, alleged, “rubbing” was a big deal, but the sharing of saliva didn’t seem to be.

It honestly deflates me to think that someone would make the claim that Manhattan High lacks school spirit, or that we don’t show it correctly. I don’t care who you are—you could be the President of the United States for all I care—if you make even the slightest implication that Manhattan High lacks school spirit, you are 100 percent wrong. We have crowds show up to tailgates before football games, both home and away. We take “fan buses” to (some) post-season competitions. When you go to a basketball game, you end up literally having to fight someone next to you for a seat. On multiple occasions, we’ve had more students present at away games than the home team did. And our student section is one of, if not the, loudest student sections in the state. (Our student section even made it onto the “Top Student Sections” Twitter account (with over 19K followers), for the whole world to see.)

Showing school pride is a wonderful tradition, a tradition that is rooted in one having school spirit. Whether you’re an athlete, cheerleader or in the stands, you show school spirit by just showing up and you amplify it when you participate.  Another example of a great tradition is Homecoming. Homecoming has changed a lot over the years. These more recent changes include the removal of the Homecoming dance and the annual parade down Poyntz. Although these were, eventually, replaced with a “Fun Night” and a shopping cart parade, the removal of these proved to be damaging to our Homecoming celebration.

Powderpuff cheerleading has since become a tradition that is crucial to Homecoming. It is the only thing that a majority of students look forward to during Homecoming. The young men that participate in powderpuff cheerleading are the same guys that lead cheers during school sporting events. The whole point of powderpuff cheerleading is to having a group of senior guys embarrass themselves, in fun, in front of the entire student body, in order to promote school spirit. Participating in powderpuff is just another way that these young men exercise school spirit. By choosing to end the tradition of powderpuff cheerleading, I—as well as many of my classmates—believe that this, too, will prove detrimental to what little of a Homecoming we struggle to hold on to, thus decreasing school spirit.

If, “…our nation depends upon the cornerstone of democracy: our ability to govern ourselves,” then we should truly use democracy: let students, teachers and staff vote on whether, or not, to keep powderpuff cheerleading.

Thank You,

Corbin Sedlacek

MHS Student Body President