School Spirit

The only spirit you’ll find at Bard is a raging anti-spirit. Around here, there’s an instinctual suspician of anything remotely conformity-inducing, a perennial will to thwart the mindless let’s-go-get-‘em-team unity that might thrive at, say, a state school. At Bard, it’s the little guy who’s important. Rooting for a football team would be like rooting for the WTO (with cheerleaders). Around here, it’s hipper to knock an institution than it is to laud it; the majority of students are assiduously dedicated to squeezing as much jaded anti-institutional cynicism as they can into their seemingly short four-year stint. In fact, while only a few seem comfortable enough to wear T-shirts or sweatpants imprinted with the college’s recognizable name, a lot of Bardians would rather capitalize on the unfortunate and slightly ironic result of reversing the school’s logo; that is, flipping ‘Bard’ around to reveal the telling and only barely disguised cognomen—‘Drab.’ (A far more fitting title for the school, they’d argue, so that graffitied complaints pertaining to Bard’s overall ‘drabness’ unravel across desktops and bathroom walls everywhere on campus.)

This might lead one to believe that the average student has little in the way of love for his or her alma mater. Yet, while most freshmen find it necessary to knock Bard in some way or another, their icy exteriors prove ultimately deliquescent; that is, over time, the cool, polished complaints melt into a warmer, if not indefinable pool of appreciation for the college. There’s a feeling of mutual respect that only borders on spirit, but that helps nonetheless in lending Bardians some sense of unity and acceptance of all that is odd. Because Bard welcomes everyone, it’s difficult to unite students under any one dictum other than that we should love our school (quietly, perhaps) for giving us our choice.