why i'm not wearing black tomorrow

October 25, 2009

Homecoming Week is unquestionably a big thing at MSJ. It is, perhaps, the event of the school year, so the huge amount of effort that's put into Homecoming Week and the drama that goes on behind the scenes should come as no surprise.

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But first, an introduction:

MSJ's Homecoming Week involves each class putting on a skit, coordinating airbands (actually, I don't know if other schools even use this term. :X Think America's Best Dance Crew), and organizing a school service project. Each day of the week is dedicated to a class (freshmen starting on Monday) and culminates on Friday with Green & White day, which is supposed to represent school unity and to cheer our (pitiful) football team on to winning their homecoming game yet another hopefully-not-so-pathetic loss.

Pessimistic, I know. But our football team is, quite frankly, the butt of jokes at MSJ. (Can you imagine how terribly they're made fun of at other schools?) Take this year's game, for example. My Facebook news feed exploded with people excitedly declaring MSJ's three-touchdown score at the homecoming game.

Of course, they neglected to mention the rival team's 62-point score.

But I digress.

The amount of string-pulling that occurs during Homecoming Week is crazy. Supreme Soul's appearance in Class of '09's performance last year? Johnny Depp's dedication kicking off our Class of '11's performance this year?

Definitely makes for one heck of a week.

So, again, the drama should come as no surprise. At the end of it all, classes are ranked by their overall performance, and usually, rank comes in order of class (seniors down to freshmen). However, this year, juniors were awarded third place, while the sophomores pulled ahead of us into second.

As a result, people are absolutely outraged, and through Facebook, some sort of rally/protest has been organized in which we're supposed to wear black (juniors' color) tomorrow (seniors and freshmen have jumped on the bandwagon, as well).

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Second, a disclaimer:

I was not involved in homecoming at all aside from co-writing the soon-to-be-published Smoke Signal review for the sophomore performance and cheering on my own class.

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Third, a clarification:

I really don't believe the sophomores outperformed us. Their skit was undoubtedly more creative and definitely less confusing, but honestly, I'm not quite sure what else was that much better. In terms of inappropriateness, their boys' booty dances certainly made up for the gross conduct of the sophomore character in our skit. And the sophomores' whole "juniors stole our props" claim is entirely baseless.

Both classes' airbands were meh. They all started boring me (and, I assure you, not just me) after a while. You see, there seems to be an unwritten rule about what kinds of airbands will perform during each class's performance (i.e. we're teenagers):

• 1 Tahitian airband
• 1 Yoko's airband
• 1 wannabe Yoko's airband
• 1 breakdance airband
• at least 2 booty dances
• at least 3 (read as: 5 but of varying degrees of quality) hip-hop airbands
• Optional: 1 poor effort of a ballroom/tango airband

Overall, both classes were extremely repetitive regarding airbands (yes, I realize there were a handful of amazing airbands, but the more prevalent lesser-quality ones, unfortunately, undermined their awesomeness), but the juniors definitely had the coordination and energy the sophomores' lacked.

And talk about spirit and energy. The juniors definitely (oh, pardon the slang) brought it. Our performance certainly didn't include the awkward stalls and silences that punctuated the sophomores' performance, and our cheering and screaming was absolutely unbelievable.

So, no, I'm not using the quality of my class's performance to argue against the whole Let's Wear Black thing. What I'm questioning is the reason we've organized it. What exactly are we trying to accomplish? Who exactly are we protesting against? The sophomores? The panel of teacher/parent judges who decided that the sophomores performed better than we did?

I see people saying how, in our hearts and minds, these ranks mean nothing, and we know we brought it, and that's all that matters. So why are we trying to prove it? Aren't we simply dividing our school even further? What are we trying to prove anyway?

Quite frankly, the only thing that organizing this whole event proves is the lack of self-confidence our class has.

Honestly, I'm still confused as to what we're going to accomplish by doing this. All this bitter rivalry is just going to fuel an intensely violent competition next year. And if wearing black is supposed to display class unity, why are we encouraging freshmen and seniors to join us? And why do we need to prove this class unity if we supposedly know we're united?

Banding together like this against the sophomores/whomever is quite simply a display of poor sportsmanship and weakness, showing the sophomores and these rankings how much power they really have over us.

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So in conclusion:

All the effort that's being put into alienating the sophomores and pointing fingers at a created enemy is surely misdirected. If we put all this energy and emotion into our senior performance next year, we could certainly put on one of the best performances MSJ's ever seen.

That is, only if we remember that Homecoming Week is about our bonding as both a class and a school.

Unfortunately, the way this year's homecoming is going, I don't see that happening. By antagonizing the sophomores, we've been trying to achieve "revenge" in the worst of ways, one that will certainly gain us more enemies than friends. True "revenge" would be bottling up this emotion to be focused next year into one hell of a performance instead of releasing it this year in its current, most volatile, hate-fueled form.

Why waste all this energy and emotion this year on the sophomores (after homecoming, no less) when we can channel them into something so much more positive next year?

It still strikes me as entirely disappointing that Homecoming Week, which is supposed to be all about school unity and pride, gradually spirals downward into this heated rivalry and name-calling among the classes.

So, no, I'm not "supporting" my class tomorrow. I'm not going to add fuel to this wildfire we, perhaps did not set for ourselves, but certainly have not contributed to stopping its spread. I'm not going to compromise my beliefs for something that's been organized in the heat of the moment in a weak attempt to somehow redeem ourselves (in whose eyes?).

And I'm certainly not wearing black.

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