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UR Spirit Coordinator and Warner School senior Jeremy Friedman, and Students’ Association President and junior Scott Strenger, spoke with the Campus Times about the UR Spirit Coordination Team.
What is the Spirit Coordination Team and what do you do?
SS: The Spirit Coordination Team includes individuals from throughout the University. It is headed by the Spirit Coordinator, who is a graduate student, and that graduate student works very closely with representatives from the student government. They work very closely with the SA president, and that’s how they were selected to get involved.
You recently made a video featuring Rocky — can you describe it?
JF: Oh, it’s awesome! Everyone should go watch it. And the timing is perfect. I feel like it’s a great way to promote Spirit Week, specifically the games.
SS: Since our mascot Rocky came to the University in the spring of 2008, there’s been a lot of jokes correlating Rocky our mascot and Rocky from the movies. People love the theme music, and we thought, “How great would it be if we took a theme line of Rocky the mascot to the Rocky movies?” So that was kind of the idea, and we had fun with it, so we hope that people who watch it have fun with it as well.
What was your goal in making the video?
SS: The goal is to unite the University community. Spirit Week comes right after Winterfest Weekend, so we have a college weekend and a whole week of free events to support unity and spirit throughout UR. So, the timing of the video this year was to come together and enjoy our mascot, enjoy our school colors, and to hopefully come out to the basketball game on Friday.
How does your group work to encourage school spirit on campus outside of athletics?
SS: We have a special promotion this year called the “Bleed Blue and Yellow” wristbands. These were distributed earlier on in the year at Fill Fauver events, and the goal of them is to have individuals wear these around campus to remind us of our school colors, and we hope that when people wear it they take pride in their university.
JF: And we’ve also worked on making the University more a part of the community through Rocky. Rocky’s been at open campus days for prospective students, at literacy programs that various student groups have done in the city of Rochester, at Red Wings and Rhino’s games, and he’ll be at the Amerk’s game coming up at the end of this month.
Is there anything else you’d like us to know or any last thoughts?
SS: We hope that students take an active part in coming to student games. We think there’s a very unified feeling when we come out to games, and we as the student body can stick together as a community. We encourage others to come out and support our friends and peers and to just have fun.
That’s what the whole spirit committee is about at the end of the day, so we hope that our message is out there and we hope that our video makes people smile.
JF: I feel that athletics has a unique power to unify a community, whether it be a college community, a city, a town, a group of people, what have you. And there’s no better place to do it than an athletic arena, so hopefully, you’ll come out to the game, support Fill Fauver initiatives, community initiatives and watch the video and pass it along to other people who will enjoy it.
You can find more Fill Fauver information on the SA website at sa.rochester.edu/fauver. The video can be found at http://www.rochester.edu/news/video/.
Cicoria is a member of the class of 2012.
