School spirit gathered dust at GCAA, as student and administrators ponder ways to improve the school culture.

Many students said GCAA is lacking in school spirit because they don’t have anything to be visibly excited about. In a poll about the amount of school spirit, two students put in an additional section: they wrote that the school had negative school spirit. It also seemed as though the middle schoolers had a higher opinion of the students’ school spirit than the high schoolers.

Noelle Roth, 9th grade, thinks that the claims of negative school spirit are true. Roth thinks that there are many ways to improve this. For example, she said, “Give us an art-related reason to cheer.”

“We could have more, nicer performances and visual art showings,” Magnolia Mulvihill, 9th grade, said. Other ideas Mulvihill gave were getting STUCO more involved and improving communication.

“Most of the time I have no idea what is going on, even in my own pathway,” Mulvihill said. “Communication could definitely help a lot because then we could all go and support each other and have more fun with it, I think. If we were informed of it, (showcases/performances)  would be better.”

Julia Aastrom, 9th grade, had a different idea. “We should have a sports team, basketball, like last year,” she said.

The high school assistant principal, Patty Ulrich, disagrees with the notion that GCAA has negative school spirit. She said that she believes that the students have a lot of school spirit. “[The students] are excited to be here; they don’t want to leave at the end of the day.”

However, she did agree that the school needed to improve attendance at arts performances.

“We’re working on getting students to performances outside their own arts.” Ulrich said. “Right now  we are trying to make sure that the calendar on the website is updated with performances, that is as far as we have gotten so far.”

Administration intends to improve school spirit by getting the information out there better about performances and giving all arts a show in the fall and spring where students could possibly get in free.