Seby Newman, Special to The Denisonian
The concept of “school spirit” is admittedly difficult to quantify.
There are many different factors that might contribute to the overall atmosphere, or “vibes,” of any given campus, or more specifically of any student’s individual pride and involvement in their campus. While the average Denison student is not, by any means, antisocial or disinterested in campus involvement (or at least, that would surprise me), it is easily noticeable that compared to other campuses, there seems to be a lack of overarching, shouting-from-the-rooftops Denisonian energy; people waking up and going to sleep proud that they are Denison students. So why is that?
The first obvious reason is the lack of campuswide important sports events. Of course a giant campus like Ohio State University has a ton of school spirit, their football stadium gets a consistent average of over 100,000 fans per game, which is about forty times the number of Denison’s enrollment. These games are packed with people yelling their school’s name, and decked from head to toe in their school’s merch. This was likely a big reason most people at a school like OSU apply there: the game, the parties afterwards, the school spirit.
Now, a giant school like that is pretty incomparable to the culture of a smaller school like Denison. Of course we aren’t going to fill up stadiums shouting “BIG RED” in the same way. We don’t even have enough passionate sports fans to fill up our football field bleachers on campus. We will never be able to party as hard as a school like that. We will never have the same school spirit as a school like that. And that’s fine. That’s not why people come to Denison.
So is it just a small-school problem? Are all small, liberal arts schools lacking in school spirit the way we are?
No, they aren’t. It’s definitely possible for small schools without Division 1 sports or a strong Greek life, to have a high school spirit as long as there is some other function that brings everyone together. St. John’s College, for example, is a school of 1,000 people max, across two different campuses. The school spirit there is described essentially as “cult-like.” This is largely because St. Johns as a school is set up in a way that everyone is doing the exact same curriculum, reading the exact same books, doing the exact same things; the curriculum is in itself the community. The people who chose that school weren’t big crowd football or party fans, they are all academically-driven bookworms who love talking about what the school is doing.
This is another extreme, but I find it interesting to compare to Denison as well, for a similar phenomena to the large OSU happens at St. John’s: everyone loves their school, everyone loves talking about their school, everyone is participating in big school events and everyone is dressed head to toe in merch. When walking on campus, I can usually count on my finger how many Denison hoodies or those red shirts I see.
I would say the main reason Denison has noticeably less school spirit is because it lacks, well, anything, that actually excites and unites more than half of the student body at a time. I guess that makes sense. It’s liberal arts. That’s arguably part of the point. The types of students Denison attracts are the people who are exceptionally gifted, either financially, athletically, artistically or socially, but none of that really intersects.
That’s not necessarily a death sentence for school spirit, though, not if there is a real effort by the administration and the students. When I was in high school, there were many different ways that the school itself and the student body tried to promote more community involvement, including things like spirit week. Each day had a certain theme to wear to class, or certain events that were hosted in the main halls of the building that promoted community gathering; like a competition for each grade to make the best hall decorations, with money prizes to the participants of the winning grade. College is different from high school in many ways (duh), but my high school did have a similar amount of people enrolled there.
So I am curious, do people agree? Is there a substantial lack of “proud to be a Denisonian” on this campus? Would Denison be “better” if it had more of that? Or is that part of the point of a school like Denison, whose motto is “these should not be the best four years of your life,” and whose career placement programs are one of the best in the country? We are all sort of doing our own thing with our own individual group of friends, using our time here as a way to get to where we actually want to be with our lives, rather than truly falling in love and appreciating being here. Do people love being at this school? Like, really love it? Do people wish they loved it more?
Seby Newman ‘28 is a creative wriitng major from Washington, D.C.