March Rally Omits Roll Call Tradition
March 15, 2018
Rather than the traditional roll call use to open rallies in the past, spirit commissioner seniors John Torchio, Ryan Regan, and Jake Finegold, invited the cast of Campolindo’s up-coming musical, “The Addams Family” to join them on the floor to begin the March Maddness rally held during Academy period on March 2.
Accompanied by a live band, the vocalists sang “When You’re an Addams” as a preview of the upcoming performances.
According to leadership member freshman Isabella Bartos, Leadership decided to make rally format change because the administration “feels that roll call – when the seniors, juniors, and sophomores boo the freshmen – they feel like the freshmen are getting bullied.”
Vice Principal Jon Drury explained, “We have a history of negative experience with the roll call, unfortunately, towards the freshman class, and we should be celebrating all of our students here because we all are Campolindo Cougars. Not any part of our student population should be booed or negatively targeted.”
“We’d consider bringing roll call back if the booing wasn’t there,” Drury added.
Spirit director senior Rachel Brickman, said, “What I’ve heard is that a lot of teachers and administrators don’t like roll call because it produces a negative atmosphere; it’s 3 quarters of the school ganging up on 1 quarter of the school, so they don’t want us to do it anymore. At the Homecoming Rally, we tried to make it a positive thing, where the freshmen cheer for themselves, but our school just has a tradition that the freshmen get booed.”
Near the end of the rally, some upperclassmen chanted “We want roll call” and booed in apparent disappointment.
Drury posted a message for students on School Loop that day, saying, “Sadly, I am disappointed that our student body chose to “boo” our leadership students because there wasn’t a student body roll call, where the entire campus has negatively targeted the Freshman class. If you want to ‘boo’ someone and or be upset that you were unable to negatively target 1/4 of our student population then you can come and talk with me.”
Junior Megan Severson said, “I think they should just do [roll call]. I mean, I think everyone should try to be more inclusive, but I think not doing roll call dampers the school spirit. ”
Bartos said, “I feel like roll call is totally fine. The freshmen don’t get their feelings hurt when they’re booed for 0.5 seconds. I think, without the roll call, the rally wasn’t as good as it could’ve been because not everyone’s spirit was out there and they weren’t really feeling in the mood to get spirited for the upcoming dance.”
“I understand where the administrators are coming from,” said Brickman, who also noted that at the final rally of the year when students move to their new section for the upcoming school year, they still boo for the empty freshmen section, even those students who are still technically freshmen themselves.
Other activities at the rally included a competition where in students were told to throw the ping pong balls into an inflatable pool. The few students who accurately made the shot into the pool received a gift card.
The gym was decorated with red, white, and blue balloons, inflatable basketballs, and jerseys with the name of each class.
For many, one of the highlights of the rally was the staff-verses-student dodgeball game. Associate principals Jon Drury and Angela Pimentel and teachers Tom Renno, Alison Adams, Erin Cody, and Caron Brownlee participated. On the students’ side, in addition to Torchio, Regan, and Finegold, seniors Liv Lagomarsino, Emily Rasmussen, Jackie Fischer, and Abby Morris competed.
The game was played for 2 rounds, with the students prevailing in both.
“I liked the dodgeball game between the kids and the staff; that was really intense,” said Severson. “[Overall], I thought [the rally] was really good.”
