#84: Dawn and the School Spirit War
I can’t really explain it, but I find this cover really unsettling. Is it Dawn’s Canadian tuxedo? Her Trumpian look of distrust at the news media? I don’t know, but it gives me the willies. Anyshit, School Spirit Month at Stoneybrook High School gives Dawn and Mary Anne the willies. They are particularly scandalized by Pajama Day (why????). Mary Anne freaks out: “CAN THEY MAKE US PARTICIPATE?!” Good god, Lemon. Dawn and Mary Anne are the enemies of joy.
On Color Day, the eighth grade is supposed to wear yellow. Dawn only has yellow socks, so her double-denim disaster stands out in the crowd, and local reporter Mimi Snowden chides her on the news for not having enough school spirit. Dawn is then chided by her spirited classmates - including Claudia and Kristy - for not participating. In fact, most of the kids who aren’t wearing yellow are getting bugged by those who are wearing yellow. Mary Anne is so shaken up by realizing that she’ll get made fun of if she doesn’t wear PJs on Pajama Day that she has a full mental breakdown, and she and Dawn create a petition to stop School Spirit Month.
“You’re not happy unless you have some cause to crusade for. This time, you picked the wrong cause. Give it up.” - Kristy to Dawn
Of course, the other kids at Stoneybrook Middle School aren’t a fan of these total cops. Someone writes Go Back to California You Weirdo on Dawn’s locker. (I’m not saying it was me, but I’m not saying it wasn’t me, you know?) The whole school becomes divided — the Pro-Spirit-Month kids versus the Anti-Spirit-Month kids, until it culminates in a huge food fight and an open forum in the school auditorium, where nothing is solved. Tensions continue to escalate and people on both sides start being cruel and destructive. Someone even dares ruin Claudia’s artwork.
I have to say, I’m a high school teacher and I’ve never seen anything like this during a Spirit Week, LOL. Some kids dress up and some kids don’t and that’s… it? But in this book it leads to an evening meeting involving parents, teachers, administrators, students, and the news media, at which parents accuse each other of being unfit and getting into fist fights. (This would probably be more triggering if I weren’t writing this on the very day that Joe Biden was declared the President-Elect, defeating Donald Trump.) The end result? Spirit Month is canceled.
Dawn at least has the decency to feel guilty, and she makes a proposal to the principal and then to the school, that Spirit Month be able to carry on but be voluntary. (Which… wasn’t it in the first place? TBH Stoneybrook Middle just needs some administrators with backbones to tell the kids to cut the shit.) And so, magically, everyone lives happily ever after!
