The following as an editorial. The views represent those of the staff of RHStoday.com and not necessarily those of the adviser, faculty or administration of Robinson or Hillsborough County School District.

Today marked the start of Spirit Week – the week prior to homecoming. This week is the most spirited time of the year, a time for students to explode with their school spirit and pride. However, judging from today’s participation, the spirit level isn’t as high as expected.

Robinson has a lot of school spirit. Our school is filled with students itching to dress up for school events. From football games to previous spirit weeks, Robinson’s true colors have proven to be more than just black, white, silver and grey.

Even though we know there are kids here with a lot of spirit inside them, the school is still compared to others as one of little spirit. Schools like Plant and Hillsborough have students constantly dressing up and going all out for their spirit weeks. Although there are some students who do dress up at Robinson, a big chunk of students are not receiving the proper information or motivation regarding this year’s Spirit Week.

This week would be a great way to emphasize our school spirit, but students have been reluctant to get excited over this year’s spirit week. With Decked Out Day and Las Vegas Day, our spirit days have been a little different. Many of us were head-over-heels excited for spirit week, but when the days were announced, we all tilted our heads.

We know Robinson has the potential to be very spirited, but the school doesn’t really know how to go about it. It’s definitely something we, as an administration and a student body, can all work towards improving.

The spirit days which caused the most confusion among students are Decked Out Day and Las Vegas Day, or Homecoming Theme Day. People weren’t sure what they were supposed to wear today for Decked Out Day, so many students didn’t dress up solely because of confusion.

Traditional spirit week days, such as Character Day and Tacky Tourist Day, are clear as to what the students are supposed to wear. However, for Decked Out Day, we were merely told to “dress nicely.” Days like this one, as well as simple days like Twin Day, are too general for spirit to really be shown. Students can wear dresses for Decked Out Day or simple matching outfits for Twin Day on any day of the week. You can’t always tell that these people are dressing up to show school spirit.

Also, for Respect Your Elders or Homecoming Theme Day, students don’t know what to wear. There are many typical Vegas-themed outfits that certainly would not be appropriate for school, so what would we wear instead? Do we dress as strippers on Thursday? In addition, the dress for juniors on Respect Your Elders Day is unclear. Sometimes we are referred to as underclassmen and are expected to wear onesies, but others have said we are to dress as normal high-schoolers. But does dressing like the latter really reflect any school spirit?

The school as a whole should work harder to get students and teachers to participate in showing their school spirit. Spirit Week should be one of extreme passion and emotion for our school. We can work together to help motivate each other to be more spirited. For instance, one student decided to plan to get a group of guys to dress up as Elvis Presley for Homecoming Theme Day, it would be easy, fun, and noticeable.

Robinson has spirit. We just need to learn how to show it.