Do you guys hate school pepper alleys and things like it?

Post Reply New Topic

Ah fair enough.

Generally the football players and cheerleaders are the biggest douchebags in the entire school. When you force the other kids to cheer douchy ones you're programming the kids in the audience to accept that douchy behavior as not only acceptable but something that should be rewarded. Administrators will claim a pep rally is to foster "group cohesion" among the school, but they're really promoting a certain personality type. When was the last time you saw the marching band get a pep rally, or the track team, or the knowledge bowl team? It does happen in some schools but for the most part the only activities that are deemed "pep" worthy are football in the fall, basketball in the winter, and baseball in the spring. Add in that the only female participation on the stage is basically cheerleaders in skimpy outfits and there's a chauvinistic undertone to the entire brainwashing procedure. So yeah, me personally, I always found them very disgusting.

I hate to say it but I agree with a lot of what you say, even though I had friends that were on the football team, in my latter years through out high school. My freshman and sophpomore years were spent being bullied by (most of) them.

I made it a point to change that for myself. I dedicated all my energy into weightlifting and becoming as strong as my genes would allow. I wanted every prick that ever picked a fight with me or humiliated me to quiver in fear at the mere sight of me.

It worked too, I'm somewhat proud of it. Not so proud of how I became somewhat of an a**hole towards alot of them but proud that I got the guts to stickup for myself and others that were getting picked on. I eventually became well accepted among the "jocks" inside of school but never made close friends with any of them but one wrestler that I put in his place for excessively picking on people during lunch. This guy would litterally sit at the lunch booths that lined the hallway for the lunch line and rip on anyone he could as they wait for lunch....it drove me insane and made my blood boil. After a fist fight with him it all came to an abrupt stop. Ironicly we ended up becoming friends and his bullying behavior was toned down quite a bit.

Anyways back to the point I think pepper alleys and the whole "school spirit" motto are complete joke. It reminds me of how followers of cults worship and adapt their leaders traditions and behaviors....can you say sheeple?

I know where you're coming from, I had "jock" friends too, but it was more of a keep your friends close and enemies closer type situation for me. Some of them aren't bad people, it's just that the entire culture surrounding them teaches them to treat other people poorly. I never worried about muscle mass, I played soccer, it's hard to keep on muscle when the sport you're involved with requires massive amounts of cardio-- that being said, I learned as a freshman not to back down to people, most of it is all bluster and talk with very few people actually stepping up to the plate. Confidence kills most attacks on a person, if you display that you're willing and able to kick their ass a lot of bigger people will actually just back down because they don't want to risk the embarrassment that you might actually be able to do it. It's one of those "image" things that has no basis in reality, but I played that image to a tee. I only got into two fights my entire school life, but I fight dirty-- joints, genitals, lower body, they're all fair game to me, the way I see it is that if we're gonna devolve to jungle law forget rules it's eat or be eaten and I will show you what an animal fights like when survival is at stake. Only took two, and pretty much no one ever took the bate again.

Glad that you started standing up for yourself! That's a great thing to do. Letting the "adults" handle it may not even work at all, because they'll just ignore the conflicts sometimes. Sometimes YOU have to get involved.
I still wish our freshmen would be accepted at the rallies, and not booed and called nasty names by everyone else.
I hated one of our pep rallies last year, however. "Battle of the Sexes." Stupid competitions, and the girls-side had to hog EVERY competition...not letting the boys have a chance.
Yes, I can tell that marching band never gets a rally. Once in a great while the school used to give the roll call cue to the band members.

When I was in school, I thought pep rallies were OK because 1. It got me out of class, and 2. I liked watching the cheerleading squad. Who's members seemed to be selected for no other reason, then their physical attractiveness.