Everywhere around Greeley West you see spirit week posters. Most also noticed the bright pink duct tape crossing out half of today’s spirit day.
The original day was supposed to be Barbie vs. Oppenheimer where it’s supposed to be pink vs. black basically. But the change was made in the beginning of the week to be Barbie vs. Kenough.
The change came about when some found the Oppenheimer half of the day offensive. Social Studies teacher Ms. Izbeth Pacheco, who found out about the change as the Mexican American Studies sponsor, explained, “Some people felt uncomfortable that a movie about a man who hurt a lot of American communities particularly the Mexican-American community and other communities of people of color were hurt by a bomb that was tested without informing them. I do not believe that was the intent behind the spirit day. However if there is concern, we should always listen and learn. After all we do say ‘All for One, One for All.’ If one Spartan is hurt or impacted by something we should strive to learn from that and move forward.”
Omari Edwards is a student council senior representative and is also the chair of West vs. Central spirit days. “It was maybe a bit of a stretch, but maybe it’s not my place to say that. But as student council representatives, we have to listen to the people so I was fine with making the change,” Edwards said.
Edwards was frustrated overall because the complaint went to administration over the committee or the council as a group. “(The person) did not reach out to me. I wish they would’ve communicated with me a little more effectively,” Edwards said.
Madison Vella is a junior class representative for Student Council also had her input. “We didn’t know about it until the morning of the spirit week that we were changing it but we decided that we weren’t going to announce why the change happened because we didn’t want to bring negative backlash. Our intent was to do a trend that happened over the summer but we didn’t think about the history behind it,” Vella said.
Student body President Zanayah Shanks explained her view as President. “Personally I didn’t consider it as big of an issue until I got to hear the voice of one of our staff members who talked to our student council class,” Shanks explained. “At some point in order to stay connected as a student body we just need to be together as one and if some people don’t think it’s good to have then we shouldn’t have it.”
