I had an encounter the other day was at a local coffee shop near CSU’s campus. I was busy at work writing an essay about Polio, and on my second latte of the five hours I’d been there. At this point in the day there were a lot of people, a lot of people at this joint and I was not surprised when a girl came up to me and asked if I could share the table. I was happy to, as I had plenty of room. We sat in silence for a few minutes as she sat up her laptop and books and went to get her own coffee. When she sat back down with the coffee she looked over at me and politely asked if I went to CSU.
“No, I’m at Frontrange right now.” I said back, pausing from my work for my first human interaction of the last five hours that didn’t start with I’ll have a soy latte.
“Are you planning to transfer over when you get your associates, then?” She seemed very genuinely interested in my plans so I told her that I was actually planning on doing my undergrad at CU. Immediately I felt the tension rise up, and it was so strange how cold she got.
“You really want to be a Buffalo and not a Ram?” She said.
“Well,” and although I suddenly found this girl to be anything but delightful I stayed calm. “I went to CSU for a few years and didn’t enjoy my time there. When I decided to go Pre-med CU made more sense.” At this point I made it very clear in my body language that I no longer wanted to continue with the conversation. Under her breath I heard her mutter something about CSU having a good pre-med program, too.
“Yes, except CSU doesn’t offer a Medical program after an undergraduate, and CU does.” I was really up on my haunches at this point, because as much as I didn’t want to start a conflict with this complete stranger, I was livid that I was being treated so poorly by her for wanting to go to another school outside Fort Collins. “CU takes more applicants from their undergraduate pool than students from other schools on average, and they offer many more internships and opportunities for pre-med students. I don’t care about being a Buffalo, I care about benefitting my career.”
She refused to talk to me further, and as soon as a table opened up she moved. It astonished me, and angered me that a person could be so narrow-minded and blinded by pride in something so trivial. After all, you shouldn’t go to a school out of community pressure, you should attend the school that will give you the most opportunity for success. She didn’t even know my name before jumping to conclusions about my character based off my college of choice.
I haven’t just encountered this with school spirit, I see this type of negativity everywhere, in fact. I have legitimately witnessed two people not be friends anymore because they were on “feuding pokemon teams.” Pokemon Go was supposed to allow strangers a chance to come together over a general love of pokemon, and instead it has turned people into irrational, vicious people that have let something that has no real function in the real world control their life and personality. This was one of the reasons I was turned off from playing the game, as many of my friends go from jovial to venomous at the mention of “team valor.”
Now, don’t even make me go into the amount of toxicity within the sporting world. It’s often joked about in media, but looking at it in the real world with the eyes of an outsider to sports is incredible. I’ve seen physical alterations happen over different football teams, or people with different basketball team’s act absolutely disgusted with each other. It’s easy for this to happen, since sports are a popular leisure activity and events are readily accessible to the public.
Look, I’m not bashing on team spirit. There are hundreds of people I’ve met that are proud, but objective about their school, or football team, or Hogwarts house. It’s extremely possible to positively express your love of something, and not offend or outcast a person upon meeting them. Pride is a part of being human, however that can easily fall into the “seven deadly sins” realm of thinking.
Take a step back before you have a discussion with somebody of another team, and wonder to yourself if you’re being a good person in your words or actions. An important part of team spirit that we as a whole forget, is that different views don’t equal disrespect. Soccer players congratulate each other and high five at the end of games, so why can’t the fans? In fact, fans that interact in negative ways tend to make the teams they love look undesirable in the process.
In other words, don’t be a horrible person to people in the name of team pride. Love your team, love your school, love your club, and love each other. At the end of the day, you love what you love and others love what they love. Being respectful to each other is far more important in the long run of the game.
