As we shove our way through the stairs of the Main Building and squeeze into the long lunch lines, we are all reminded of the large student population at Lexington High School. Despite our proximity, LHS lacks a school-wide community connection—not only do we seldom see our friends, but we also often find ourselves unable to meet new people as we lack the time to get to know new familiar faces. To combat this, each grade’s Class Council works towards building a stronger sense of community at LHS by organizing several school spirit weeks. However, school spirit weeks have not been effective in fostering a sense of community at LHS.
One cause of the inefficacy of spirit weeks is a lack of communication. Currently, the main method of communicating spirit weeks is through social media platforms. However, there is a significant portion of students who do not have these platforms or do not follow their Class Council’s account. As a result, many students are not informed of the spirit weeks until after they occur.
“I never know about them,” Katelyn Tang-Jones, a junior at LHS, said. “I don’t know where to find what the theme of the day is.”
While other methods are present to communicate the existence of spirit weeks— word of mouth and emails to teachers—they do not seem to be effective. Teachers are flooded with a plethora of other emails, leading to difficulties in advertising spirit weeks in the classroom. Without proper, widespread communication, it is difficult for some students to participate, further limiting the effectiveness of spirit weeks in creating a school-wide community.
Additionally, while Student Councils see spirit weeks as an opportunity to connect across the school, students seem to view them as more superficial.
“They just seem like too much effort, to be honest,” Olivia Bao, a sophomore at LHS, said.
Tang-Jones, having participated in a Pajama Day in the past, said the Spirit Day did not help her feel more connected to the LHS community.
Due to this lack of motivation, the Spirit Weeks lose their value to students, who likely have other priorities with academics. Without this sense of importance, Spirit Weeks lose several more participants.
However, Class Council members believe Spirit Weeks to be an effective way to build the LHS community because of student engagement.
“It’s not ever just a donning-whatever-the-clothes-are-for-the-day,” Rohen Sundaram, the Class of 2025 Advisor, said. “It’s really trying to show [that] we’re doing this together.”
While it can be agreed that teams, clubs, or ensembles at LHS have successful Spirit Days, LHS as a whole does not have a shared, preestablished sense of belonging. In theory, Spirit Weeks seem like they could help create this missing sense of belonging.
“I think having more school-wide things with different people from all grades participating can be a good way to bring people closer together,” Jackson Sarker, the Class of 2026 Treasurer said.
Most of us have likely felt the same during Spirit Weeks: it is fun to see others’ creativity on days like Halloween, but we don’t often end up interacting and connecting just because we wear similar clothing. Therefore, it is vital to see Spirit Weeks as they are now: not as a means by which LHS should build a sense of community from scratch, but as a way to prolong a community that already exists. Perhaps, if we all intentionally open ourselves up to interact with those we don’t know very well, Spirit Weeks could become a leading force of connection at LHS. At present, however, they persist as a light-hearted, trivial tradition of deciding the wardrobe for the day.
