The special week of school when people dress up, get creative and play sports with some friendly competition has been getting fewer participants this year.

Even our teachers and staff members participate in spirit week. They seem to be making the most out of it and having fun. Why can’t we?

Whether it’s the bad spirit week ideas, or people just not wanting to participate anymore, our school is lacking in school spirit. What happened to wearing school colors or the school T-shirts on Fridays to show spirit?

Bad spirit week ideas are usually the ones very little students dress up for, such as “Dress up as your hero” or “Dress up as your favorite teacher.” Many students can’t seem to find the incentive or they don’t know how to dress up for it. I, for one, surely don’t know how to.

It’s understandable that our school is small, so we can’t have all the big events other schools do, such as pep rallies with cheerleaders and the football team. With this in mind, you’d think that when Leadership plans an event that has the opportunity to show any school spirit or creativity, students would engage in them.

This year alone, we have had several spirit weeks, with one more on the way. The most popular being Gender Bender Day, when girls dress up as boys and vice versa. Since so few students are taking advantage of school events, what if they were stripped completely?

“If Spirit Week was taken away I’d be sad. It’s important to me, it lets me be outgoing and weird,” freshman Johana Cortes said.

One of the activities utilized to generate more school spirit are the House Olympics. The House Olympics, held annually with four different sports, each with a duration of one week has several players, but not enough some would think. This event is for everyone, but mostly to get the male population involved more since boys might not like the idea of dressing up as much as girls do. A physical school activity such as this one could make boys want to play and show more effort.

The good thing about this is that you don’t have to be on the sports team at Birmingham. You can be horrible at the sport. What counts is that you’re having fun, showing your spirit and making memories with your fellow students.

“Playing volleyball during the House Olympics was exciting. If it was gone I wouldn’t have the opportunity to play with my classmates and have fun,” sophomore Sean Williams said.

A possible solution to promoting school spirit is asking students what kind of activities they enjoy and doing and the most voted-on activity gets made a reality. Voting would lead to students participating in them more since they themselves chose the activity.

Promoting events better is another solution, something the Spring Fling Dance failed to do. The Spring Fling Dance was scheduled before Spring Break. Big events such as this should be promoted weeks in advance with a poster and several announcements. The dance was promoted the week of the dance, with a result of students having to rush to buy tickets. Even though students did buy tickets, there were many tickets still left to be sold and because of that, Spring Fling was canceled.