Chants are part of an ancient rowdy high school tradition of school spirit and pride. The best chants bring out the best of school spirit on campus, at school functions off of campus, and at interscholastic competitions, all while maintaining an attitude of friendly competition and respect towards other schools. These are the values that are abandoned by the latest iteration on the Irvington chant that ASG introduced at the Welcome Rally this year.
For those who don’t remember the chant, this is how it goes: “Remind me who I’m talking to—MSJ, is that you? Noooo. Remind me who I’m talking to—Washington, is that you? Noooo. Remind me who I’m talking to! Irvingtooon!” ASG has devised this chant to replace the “Irvington, how do you feel?” chant that Irvington had had previously. This chant, while beloved, has faced some criticisms in the past, including its vague use of “good.” Last year, Voice staff writer Katelyn Shen was even inspired to write a humor piece satirizing the chant.
However, it’s important to remember that any new chant must not be accepted just for the sake of novelty—it should be better than the chant before. Instead of building a shared school identity and improving on its predecessor, Irvington’s new chant only tarnishes our school’s reputation and defines our school identity to a petty gimmick. [cut off front page]
First, let’s talk about how the new chant tarnishes Irvington’s reputation among the other high schools we interact with. Irvington’s classic “how do you feel” chant isn’t just used at rallies in the big gym. Everywhere Irvington students go, the chant follows. As one of the chant leaders in marching band, I am privileged to have experienced the raw school spirit of hundreds of Irvington students expressing their pride at band reviews and competitions. In band, we actually have many chants beyond “how do you feel,” each one of them celebrating the quality of our performances and our school spirit. They all have something in common—none of them call out other schools or antagonize them in any way. The “how do you feel” chant has also been exported elsewhere: on the steps of the Alameda County Courthouse, on plane flights to DECA competitions on the East Coast, and anywhere that Irvington students travel.
Changing the chant to the “Remind me” chant makes these exports of the official school chant problematic. First, we are making it so specific that it can’t be used at many events. Not all Irvington events involve Mission San Jose or Washington—calling out these schools at a competition where they are hardly present makes no sense whatsoever. To other schools at these events, we are not students with school spirit but rather vikings with a vendetta.
Moreover, we are targeting and inciting competition against two specific schools. Sure, there’s nothing explicitly derogatory towards other schools in the chant, but the chant implies that all our pride in our own school is grounded in othering those schools. By taking so much pride in saying we do not belong to a certain school, we insinuate that other schools are inferior, that they are below us. We create an us vs them attitude and drive a wedge between our sister schools here in Fremont. How do you think MSJ Warriors or Washington Huskies would feel about a chant that expressly targets them in this way? Perhaps they would feel offended. More likely, they would laugh at our petty immature gimmick. Either way, our school’s reputation doesn’t come out well.
This gimmick also compromises the identity of our school. A chant should emphasize the shared values of a school and empower students. A good chant should not be about someone else. Imagine a politician stating, “We have great pride in our country because we are not Canada or Mexico.” This kind of statement is not inspiring neither inspiring nor meaningful.
On a more semantic level, even the word choice of the new chant is dull and uninspiring. The audience drones a “nooooo” or a “boooo,” adding to a negative atmosphere. Contrast this to the positive connotations of our previous refrain of “we feel good,” which seems blissful in comparison.
Supporters of this new chant invariably conclude that anything is better than the old chant since nobody actually feels “good” at Irvington. While mental health issues and a lack of overall good feeling are existent at Irvington, changing the chant does nothing to change that. Not being part of another school doesn’t bring anyone joy—it only brings the temporary feeling of superiority that masquerades as excitement.
Let me be clear: I would support a revision to our traditional “how do you feel” chant. Its words would make any English teacher cringe with its unspecificity. However, this new chant brings the quality of our chant several rungs down from its current state. If I held the power to create a new chant, I would keep the existing “Irvington, how do you feel?” as a framework, but instead change the audience response. Something like “Blue and white, Vikings have the might!” would be leaps and bounds better than the “Remind me” chant.
In a world where polarization and hatred dominate the political and social landscape in America, the last thing we need to be doing is bringing down other schools in order to feel a false impression of school spirit. Now more than ever, we need to empower, not exclude. If we can’t start doing that now, in this one high school in Fremont, California, then there isn’t any hope left for American society.
