Something is different this year.
It’s not an obvious change. No bulletin boards are covered with flyers announcing it, and no professors are mentioning it. In fact, you may be missing it altogether unless you are paying close attention.
But we’ve noticed.
Campus is abuzz with a low rumble unfamiliar to those who have been at Bradley the past few years. It’s the buzz of school spirit, and it’s spreading across the Hilltop.
Time and time again, we have written about student apathy that was revealed in low attendance at athletic events, student refusals to become informed and a general reluctance to participate in cam- pus activities.
From what we have seen, this apathy is ending.
This newfound excitement, this Bradley pride, is evident in conversations overheard among
classmates making plans to attend the next soccer game. We see it as students line up to snap a picture with Kaboom!, and we notice it as we walk across campus on Fridays through a sea of red shirts.
Welcome Week activities set attendance records, even as scorching heat had all of us sweating.
B United, a new event meant to rally school spirit among a primarily freshmen audience, attract- ed students of all ages, greatly exceeding expectations of the event’s planners.
The excitement rolled over to that evening’s Late Night BU as students packed Markin, filling the recreational center with chatter and making it hard to walk from activity to activity among the more than 2,500 students in attendance.
Throughout the week, we saw students excited to get involved, excited to be the Bradley Braves.
Student organizations filled Founder’s Circle for the Activities Fair, enthusiastic to bring their clubs to new heights this year.
At Freshman Convocation, University President Joanne Glasser snapped a selfie with Kaboom! and announced a new Bradley Snapchat account as students joined the selfie spree on Twitter with the hashtag #bradleyu.
Even before Welcome Week began, students filled Shea Stadium to watch men’s soccer take on Notre Dame Aug. 19, breaking the record for highest attendance at a Bradley soccer match with 3,099 fans.
Move-in day found students arriving on the Hilltop and working side by side with greeks to get situated in the residence halls, refusing to be slowed by thunderstorms.
But the excitement goes beyond all of these events. It extends to the hundreds of organizations across campus.
We see a Student Senate continuing its Rise of the Red campaign and increasing efforts to get students involved. We see Activities Council of Bradley University’s jam-packed fall calendar, which features a night with celebrity Bo Burnham. And we see our own big plans to produce a paper you WANT to pick up every Friday.
We see strong leadership among smaller organizations that are determined to make it their best year yet.
And we see university administrators all across campus working to provide valuable experiences to each and every student.
The time has come to say goodbye to an apathetic student body. We must turn this rumble into a roar and commit to carrying our school spirit throughout this year and on to the next.
Applying lipstick to a pig will not change its status as a pig. Bradley faces a myriad of problems that, for the most part, it has brought upon itself over the past decade. The university leadership has some tough decisions to make, not the least of which is whether said leadership is up to the challenge or…..is it the source of the problem? Some tough decisions to make indeed.