In high school, I used to sit, anxious, squirming in my chair for the 3:00 bell to ring so I could go home and start getting ready for the game.

This was every Friday night for me: I would get in my uniform, go on the track and cheer on the Brush Arcs as they led our school to victory week after week. And even when we didn’t win, you can bet that I was still in my uniform cheering for them as loud as I could.

I loved my high school. I supported it in every way I could because it gave so much to me: an education, opportunities, friends and an undying sense of school spirit. When I applied to GW I was hoping for that same thing. But now, as I enter my second year here, something has become very apparent: there is no school spirit. Period. GW needs to establish a sense of community and school spirit if it ever wants its students to be proud to bear its logo.

My friends and I sometimes sit around and ask each other if we really belong here – if we truly feel like Colonials. And the answer is always a resounding, unanimous “no.” We don’t feel like Colonials. I don’t feel like I belong to a strong student unit that supports me. It is this kind of support that students need if there is to be any sense of unity.

Students here don’t get to experience that “hominess” that traditional campuses have. Our campus is the city. The fact that we are located in downtown Washington D.C., where people often work and not live, play and not stay, gives the GW community much more of a responsibility to provide that sense of “home” for its students. It is only when this happens that students will truly feel a sense of belonging, that sense that every part of their body is bleeding buff and blue.

How do we boost this feeling? That is the grey area in this equation. What will unite every student? Get a football team? While this was the main source of school spirit in high school and in most state schools, it is probably not realistic here. GW has long been known for its internships, not so much its athletics. Have more functions on the Vern? While a smaller, more intimate atmosphere would help, this too is unrealistic as Mount Vernon can’t possibly hold all 10,000 undergraduates in attendance. So what do we do?

I propose a full GW spirit committee. We do currently have a spirit program with a mission statement that promises “to involve students, staff, faculty and alumni in the excitement of student life.” But frankly, this program doesn’t cut it as far as uniting students. The entire program is made up of the cheer team, the dance team and our mascots.

GW’s other spirit-related group is the Colonial Army. This is a full-fledged student organization that attends basketball games to root on our team. While they do try to hype up students for the games, their domain doesn’t extend farther than basketball. But the problem is not, in contrast to what so many writers before me have written, about basketball. Does anyone really believe that higher attendance in basketball games is what is going to unify the whole school? Isn’t it a little pathetic to think that the general feeling of the entire university lies on the ability of one team? The problem is rooted so much deeper than that.

What I am advocating is a good old-fashioned spirit team, like there used to be in middle school. It would organize events like “Buff and Blue Day,” where, for example, all GW students dress in only GW apparel, or class vs. class basketball games where, say, sophomores and juniors would go to the Smith Center and watch their peers take on other grades.

As these events become traditions, students would learn to love their school and appreciate their class. This way, when they graduate, they will look at the people around them and feel quiet adoration, remembering the four years they spent together: living together, studying together and rooting each other on.

The writer is a sophomore majoring in biological anthropology.

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