Welcome back, Honkers

Classes have recommenced at Yuba City High School. As teachers and students have their own sets of goals to accomplish for the coming school year, our campus, as a whole, hopes to accomplish the goal of reigniting our Honker pride and spirit.

To help us get started, the new Associated Student Body members decided to rename the school halls befitting the sense of community our school promotes as well as our school's mascot and colors.

From the previous names — such as Business Hall, Language Hall and Science Hall — the ASB have renamed them to Brown and Gold Hall, Honker Hall and Unity Hall.

Senior Keenan Lewis, the new ASB vice president, said, "Every ASB group comes back to school wanting to lead the school back to its spirit and 'Honker Pride.' As a senior and vice president, we want to forever make a lasting impression even before school begins, and this is how we wanted to do it."

"We are trying to reignite school spirit and pride, so renaming the halls to more relevant names — i.e., Brown and Gold Hall and Spirit Hall — seemed obvious. When the students walk through the halls, they will be reminded every day of what the school stands for," said physical education teacher and ASB adviser Natalie Page.

This first approach in re-energizing campus pride, however, has caused confusion for some students, such as sophomore Sarah Lopez, who said, "I think it's a fun idea, but I am still used to the previous names. It'll be hard to get used to and a little bit confusing for the first couple of weeks."

With this change of names, ASB members want to push this change over into school spirit. "I think school spirit has been lost in the shuffle," Page said. "There are a lot of things that need to achieved in the school year, and spirit and pride have been placed on the shelf of 'things to do.'"

Page said everything at school this year will be focused on bringing pride and spirit to the forefront, with the hope that students will start caring more about the school and their school experience as a whole: "With pride comes motivation. Motivation and pride spark change — a change that will hopefully be positive in academics, athletics, attitudes and school culture," she said.

For YCHS, the goal is simple — bring pride and enjoyment back into our Honker campus to bring back a stronger sense of school culture. With that, sparks for bigger changes can alighted, such excelling in all areas of athletics and academics.

The 2012-2013 school year has begun with a change for our teachers and our students in hopes that we can reignite our Honker spirit. As Natalie Page and her ASB students say, "We bleed brown and gold." Welcome back, Honkers.

Julia Lancaster is a senior at Yuba City High School. Her column appears every six weeks in Education.