We live in fear on a campus. Fear of long lines in the Union, parking tickets waiting on the hood of our vehicles and poor grades.

However, on top of this list, the University recently tacked on another fear for students to worry about — spirit citations.

Spirit citations are tickets handed out by our mascots, Freddie and Frieda, to students on campus who sport another school’s apparel.

The BG News believes these citations do promote spirit to some degree. The tactics may come off as a bit aggressive or even annoying to some students, but the overall outcome could be positive. The staff of The BG News believes that it is good that the people who are handing out tickets are our mascots. This promotes spirit while also attempting to keep a potentially awkward situation light-hearted.

But what does this look like for students who are here for a single class and belong to another university? Or what about people who are just visiting the campus?

The BG News doesn’t want the campus to come off as unaccepting and this attempt at promoting spirit may do that. Despite this possible side effect, The News believes that these “citations” will continue to come off as friendly and light-hearted instead of provoking students who do not care to be spirited or may be minimally associated with the University.

The BG News believes the University spirit gear passed out with some citations may help to increase the intentions of promoting school spirit.

On a campus where student apathy about school pride is consistently high, any form of spirit promotion will likely help to increase individual spirit and pride.

Students need to re-evaluate our school spirit. Students should be proud of the University rather than putting it down constantly, especially during Homecoming Week.

Although handing out tickets may not be the best way of promoting spirit, at least the University is actually attempting to do so. This is obvious through other efforts such as playing “Ay Ziggy Zoomba” around campus each Friday or by providing free thundersticks for fans at the first home game. These are both excellent and likely two of the best efforts of the University in promoting school spirit.

The News believes the University often stumbles in trying to promote school spirit, but that its current efforts seem to be working slightly better.

Although the University may not be doing everything right to promote spirit, it is still taking a positive step toward eliminating the apathy of a majority of its students.

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