On the first day of frosh week a group of volunteers gathered outside the SAC office to make some noise. Not the unrehearsed trumpeting of the Engineering band, but the fight songs of yesteryear sung to get people out of the summer lull and into the swing of school spirit.
“Toronto! Toronto! Toronto Varsity! YAAAAAAY Blues!” yelled the 18 volunteers.
Did someone say school spirit?
“There’s a lot of underlying school spirit,” says Andrew Johnston, a third-year Chemical Engineering student. Upset over U of T’s pathetic enthusiasm for varsity sports and other matters social, Johnston walked into the SAC office in late summer and decided to rebrand the Blue Crew, the school-spirit brigade, into a louder, more noticeable campus presence.
With the Herculean task of reviving the Blue Crew on his shoulders, Johnston remains optimistic and, well, peppy.
“We wanna be loud,” Johnston said addressing his core group of volunteers. “We want people to say, ‘Whoa, those people are loud.'”
Purple whistles, pens and Blue Crew T-shirts were handed out to the group of spirit savants, and sign-up sheets were displayed for impressionable youth seen touring the campus that day. Approximately 30 signatures were recorded by day’s end.
Surmounting student apathy and rumours that U of T is a place where fun comes to die may be the Blue Crew’s most formidable assignment.
“People say they hate it, but no one has done anything about it,” said Andre Worman, a Blue Crewer and fourth year Commerce student. “I like U of T. I feel it’s losing out by not being pro-active.”
Although the Crew’s focus has always been sports, it’s early years saw both club and orientation involvement. A narrowing of focus to varsity games coupled with a steady decline over the last four years forced the Crew to informally disband.
Emails were sent to clubs and student unions this past summer to get the word out, and future high traffic events like the Oct. 4 homecoming will hopefully market the Crew as a helping hand to event organizers, where burger-flipping or heavy lifting will be offered where needed.
SAC Student Life Coordinator Scott Tremblay hopes a similar fate can be avoided this time around by broadening the Crew’s mandate. “The problem that has happened in the past is that it got this reputation as being just a Varsity cheer-squad,” he says, “but it’s not just athletics, it’s not just rah-rah-rah. There’s a lot more to student life than just going to events.”
By day three of frosh week, the original 18 volunteers had dwindled to seven. Carrying a trumpet, a Viking blow-horn, a metal garbage can and a loud-speaker, the Crew made campus rounds to advertise the upcoming Queens-U of T football game played this past Saturday.
“St. Mike’s! St. Mike’s!” yelled Johnston to a crowd of confused frosh outside the St. Mike’s cafeteria. “How’s it going? How’s Frosh Week?”
Muffled acknowledgements lifted from the crowd.
“What do we think of Queen’s?”
Boos and heckles were heard.
“That’s right.”
As the leaders know, the real test will come after Frosh Week, when the revelry has died down and the demands of term-papers come into sharper focus. How the Crew will merge a fragmented student life centered around the colleges into a school-wide effort, will be a big hurdle.
To cheer on Blues athletes sign up for the Blue Crew spirit brigade.
Check out the SAC website at www.sac.utoronto.ca or email [email protected] for more info.
