This past weekend, many universities across Canada finished off their first month of the new school year by holding homecoming. The question is: where was ours? Unlike other universities, UTM didn’t host a homecoming for its students and many of us are wondering why.
UTM isn’t known for being a “party” school like Western or Queen’s. In fact, UTM isn’t even in the top 50 best party universities in Canada, let alone the top ten in Ontario. While other schools tend to focus on other aspects of university life like promoting school spirit and helping their students relieve stress in ways like partying, our school tends to focus only on the academic aspect of university life.
Oftentimes at UTM, we don’t focus enough on things other than academics. Don’t get me wrong, there are clubs and events held at UTM like Wellness Week, which has a main goal of helping students stay mentally and physically healthy. Although this is a good way of promoting wellness, it’s not like this event is held every week or helps everyone destress in the same way partying does for some people.
As for school spirit, do any of you know our school colours? Some of you may not, and that’s okay because it’s not like it’s been promoted that much throughout the school year. We may have had sales at the Bookstore on spirit wear and UTM merch, but even that’s not enough to promote school spirit here.
We need spirit weeks and more events that allow us to show other schools how proud we are to be students here at UTM. For example, we should promote more of the varsity home games that are held on campus and get more students to support our varsity men’s and women’s teams by showing up in our school colours and cheering on the Eagles.
I’ve been to some of the varsity home games myself, and it’s safe to say our teams don’t get as much support as they should. The last games I went to, only the varsity men’s team watched the varsity women’s team and vice versa. The benches for spectators were bare, with little to no people from our school watching, let alone cheering on, our Eagles.
I believe one of the reasons why many people don’t attend the varsity games and support our men’s and women’s teams is because they aren’t promoted enough. To up our promotion game, we should put up more signs and have more announcements that let all students know the time and place of the varsity sports games.
Overall, we may not be a “party” school but we should at least try to show others that we aren’t afraid to wear our school colours. More of us should come out and support our varsity teams. Who knows, maybe if we start showing more school spirit, we won’t be seen as just an academically strong school but as a school that can do both—support each other while working hard.
