I’ve talked to many people in the AD and friends of the program about this. You know why the big schools have such strong support and pride rooted in all this tradition? Because it’s the cool thing to do… I shit you not. Sure programs that have been some of the winningest ever have banners to rest on, but then the examples like Gamecocks football show you don’t need loads of Championships to have a strong following.
Supporting the school has to be cool. When students think that it is the cool thing to do - the place to see and be seen - that is when we will have a strong following and tradition will develop. I hate to say it, but apathy has a lot to do with it, and no matter what a small group of dedicated individuals come up with, until we can find the way to appeal to the masses, it will always mean small turnouts and lame support.
How do we create the ‘cool factor’? I don’t know. If we can figure out a way to energize the students into thinking all things Niner related are awesome, the problem is solved. Traditions build themselves. Once our own students as a whole body move away from apathy and into a realm of die hard support, they become alums that support the same way and the cycle continues, and the movement snowballs. Once the alumni are in the community and don’t take any shit from anyone about the U of C and demand the be recognized on the same level as other institutions, we have better standing in Charlotte, and NC. We also have better donations, which means better facilities and more resources.
I’ve tried to reiterate this with folks in the AD and Alumni Assoc. in general, that until we get the students engaged from SOAR on, and keep them engaged throughout college, we are going to fail at creating what we aspire.
I will say this, as two simple solutions that maybe don’t create cool, but definitely put students in a much better position to view it that way. It also addresses and solves some other problems as well.
- Require incoming freshmen traditional students to live on campus; and
- Disallow parking for freshmen traditional students.
This would free up several thousand parking spots per semester. It also forces students to live on campus and develop as a community. Further, since they can’t immediately and conveniently run off campus for meals or on the weekends it fixes two other problems. The first is that they are on campus significantly more. The second, is that it provides business for the for-profit food and entertainment venues on campus, and therefore gives them more incentive to stay open later and serve more students on the weekends. You have more students around, so more things are open, more things are open, so you get even more students around. Again, it’s the snowball effect.
This is not an ultimate solution to the cool factor, but I think it’s a great place to start and I wish the U would go ahead and institute a policy as such.
Again, start with the students, not the die-hards… all of them, and make all things Niner the in thing, and your problems are gone 10 years.