By Banen Alazawi and Nyla Shields
Staff Writers
Many people think bringing the three schools on the Cody campus together for an event would be a mistake, but that was the plan for the 2014 homecoming pep assembly.
The student councils of all three schools came together last month to plan for a combined pep assembly for homecoming week even though there have been fights between the schools in the past.
Cody DIT senior Dashayia Murphy said the last time the three schools got together in one room was the 2012 pep assembly where multiple fights broke out between the schools during the event.
“I remember seeing students being maced and other people having asthma attacks and passing out,” Murphy said.
The student councils decided it was important to find a way to get the schools together without the fighting so they planned carefully to prevent problems.
One feature of the plan was to not have students wear the uniforms that make it easy to tell the schools apart. The day of the pep rally students at all three schools were supposed to dress according to grade instead of wearing their school uniform colors. The freshman wore green and white; the sophomores, red and white; the juniors, blue and silver; and the seniors, purple and black.
Instead of sitting separated by schools, students would sit with others in the same grade from all three schools.
The day before the pep rally Cody APL backed out of the plan. Cody DIT college counselor and student council advisor Myles Morgan explained that Cody APL principal Johnathon Matthews expressed concerns about trading one kind of tension for another and took an approach that minimized unknowns and decreased as much risk as possible.
Cody MCH student council member Johnea Neely and MCH junior Daja Burch said they felt insulted about the chance that they wouldn’t be together as a whole school.
“We all sit together during games, so why can’t we sit together for an hour for a pep assembly?” Burch said.
In the end, Cody APL sat on one side of the gym and Cody MCH and Cody DIT dressed in their class colors and sat together by grade.
Cody DIT senior class ambassador Arnez Colvin was on the floor at the pep assembly to keep students in the stands on the DIT and MCH side. He was in favor of the plan, but he thought people might end up fighting.
“I really expected something to go down, but everybody ended up just having a good time,” Colvin said.
