Proving Our Worth

If you were to judge Conn’s school spirit from the Conn Club Hockey verses Coast Guard Academy game this past Saturday, it’d be impossible to say we don’t have spirit.

But this spirit reveals itself in an unusual way: not once did I hear screams “Let’s go Conn Coll!” or “Awww…CC!” Rather, all chants and screams were insults or jeers against the Coast Guard Academy’s team.

I’ve been to my share of professional and collegiate sporting events in my life, so I know jeers are not unusual, but never have I heard a team’s fans solely use jeers to show their enthusiasm and support.

The game brought the campus together to heckle our “common enemy” with chants like “Navy rejects” “we have girls/yours don’t count” and “get your own rink,” among many others, all varying in creativity and offensiveness.

Why do we not have this same turnout and fervor for home games against our NESCAC peers?

We have the spirit (although it may be slightly strangely directed).

But why does it have to be coaxed out of us only by the Coast Guard Academy once or twice a year?

I think a lot of it stems from many students’ underlying feeling that Conn is a mediocre college.

With most new initiatives from the college administration or Student Government Association, we often are compared with NESCAC schools, and subconsciously it often feels we’re not quite on par.

What is Colby doing for this? Should we imitate their methods? How should we be keeping up with Middlebury on environmental efforts?

These are all questions that have arisen in various committees and presentations during my four years at Conn, and which always make me feel that we’re constantly struggling to catch up.

Why aren’t the questions more like: what works best for Conn? What do we as a collective think is best for us?

Granted, I know these questions are eventually asked in later conversations, and that we do lead the way in some ways, but they’re often asked too late in the process.

They should be the first questions we grapple with and first opinions we seek.

We are a unique college and are told we are “extraordinary,” but the constant comparison with other “similar” schools negatively affects our school spirit and exacerbates the preexisting feeling that we’re at a “second choice” school.

For example, in the ever-entertaining “light bulb” jokes about colleges, the one about Conn was:

“How many Connecticut College students does it take to change a light bulb?

Two – one to change the bulb and one to complain about how if they were at a better school the bulb wouldn’t have burned out.”

It’s sad that it appears as our main stereotype, unlike Middlebury or other NESCAC peers’ version of the lightbulb joke that poke fun of the snowy weather or liberal nature of their campuses.

This appears in so many areas of our daily campus life, even including the proposed new camel logo, which when lined up next to the athletic logos from peer schools, appeared almost overly ferocious and competitive. We have to show we’re good, unlike Williams (an angry looking cow with his behind in the foreground) who just proves they are a good school by action and attitude.

They are Williams, and they are a good school.

We are Connecticut College and we are a good school.

Come on Conn, let’s show it more than once or twice a year as we jeer our neighboring Coasties.

Let’s root for the Camels.