Chanting at soccer games while decked out out in blue and white body paint and going to dances in full-on costume, four years ago, the class of 2012 set a high standard for Urban pride.

However, this palpable school spirit has died out in the past three years. “I’ve seen the decline of upperclassmen showing up to events,” said Chantal Toupin (’15) of her time at Urban. “It’s a repetitive cycle: If (upperclassmen) don’t show up, people assume that the next (event) is going to be boring and don’t show up.”

Both Toupin and Nikki Kimzey (’15) were quick to draw attention to the important role that upperclassmen play in modeling Urban pride for the rest of the student body. Kimzey saw a direct correlation between its decline and a “lack of leadership … it all starts with the seniors.”

Though viewing Old Urban as somehow more authentic than Current Urban has been a trend among graduating classes for years, these two students decided to take action to turn this trend around. To do so, they came up with a plan to institutionalize school spirit: Senior Spirit Committee. The committee’s straightforward mission is to “utilize the influence that seniors have on the rest of the school in order to get more people to come to events and have a lot of fun at them,” wrote Kimzey and Toupin in an email to the class of 2015.

In an attempt to unify the school, they plan on having joint meetings with other student groups to take initiative in areas where it is needed. “We know that Student Committee is really busy, so we thought this would be a way for us to do our part, but not interfere with what they do,” said Toupin.

Senior Spirit Committee has one meeting already under its belt, during which seniors planned out their first course of action at the fall dance last friday. “Before the dance starts, we had a room set up for seniors only, where we had food and music…we all stormed the dance together,” said Kimzey.  She added that the committee recruited one of the seniors to be a floating photographer, who took candid pictures as they roamed the dance, in an attempt to recreate fun (albeit slightly embarrassing) memories of dances from her underclassmen years.

Toupin and Kimzey believe that the formation of the committee is the first step to revitalizing school spirit down the line. “I hope that this will become an Urban tradition … we are

such a tight knit community, that it is really important that the whole school comes together.”

If you are a senior interested in joining the committee, email Kimzey or Toupin to get involved. For everyone else, look forward to more spirit events to come.