Students at California State University, Dominguez Hills seem to embody a lack of school spirit in campus-related activities.
By Francisco Padilla
Staff Writer
Yes, CSUDH is a commuter school, but why should that stop us from being active and lively on campus?
In 2002, Toro Tuesdays were implemented as a weekly event for students to proudly wear their school colors of Toro red and gold. Students who participate have the opportunity to win a $2,000 or $4,000 scholarship for their next semester as long as they stop by the ASI office in their attire.
There is a raffle every week with small prizes and each winner is automatically entered into the grand raffle during finals week.
Yet on Tuesdays, students are more concerned with lining up for some tacos from the weekly taco stand, because of course Taco Tuesday is far more important than Toro Tuesday or what not.
“For the fall semester we had about 120 students sign up per week, and for the spring we’ve had around 50-60 per week,” said Associated Students, Inc. Program Assistant, Chonya Tongdee.
So, although 15,000 students are enrolled at CSUDH, less than 1 percent of them are actually wearing school attire on Toro Tuesdays.
The school has also taken the strategy of giving away free In-N-Out burgers to students to encourage them to attend home basketball games. Before the promotion for free burgers, Toro Athletics reported that the game with the highest attendance was against the California State University, San Marcos’ basketball team on Dec. 17 with 289 attendees in the Torodome.
The lowest? Two days later against the University of California, San Diego basketball team, with a massive 120 people in attendance.
Once the free burgers were put into effect, the attendance increased to 622 and 780 people. An improvement? Yes. But, for a stadium that has a capacity of 4,100 (according to gotoros), those numbers aren’t enough to even fill up 1/5 of the stadium.
Most students on campus aren’t interested in sports, unless they’re a student-athlete, regardless of how good the teams may be doing.
“The closest thing I ever got to a field was being on the third floor of the Lacorte hall building to see David Beckham and the LA Galaxy team warm up,” said Elizabeth Guillen, senior communications major.
Homecoming week happened during the first week of February, but the email announcement only pertained to the involvement fair. There was no mention of the Homecoming Carnival on Friday or any promotion for the free homecoming t-shirt giveaway to the first 100 students to attend Saturday’s game.
But are the students at fault for this lack of school spirit or is the university at fault for not promoting it enough?
“I don’t go to many school events because the university doesn’t promote them,” said Carlos Ulloa, junior English major. “If the university would spend more time encouraging students to attend games, workshops and events, I would go.”
A start for a possible solution is simply informing the students of all the events going on for the week in a weekly email. The email could pertain to any sports games, any speakers on campus, or even any possible prizes for the weekly Toro Tuesday raffle.
By doing this, students will be more knowledgeable about what is happening on campus, because school spirit is a huge part of college culture and it is both the students and university’s job to make sure it survives on campus.
