Sectioning Off: Students in the stands get out of hand

By Kenna Rooney

Staff Reporter

January 2022

Wisconsin has a long history of prejudice against minorities. This has bled into its schools and, by extension, sporting events and student sections. While some rules have been put in place to obstruct the harmful acts of students, things still happen that can be scary for students and make them feel unsafe in a place built for learning. When students go to events to have fun and end up feeling hated by their peers, a distasteful stigmatism is placed upon that school as well as its students.

“They like to throw out their favorite racial slurs and microaggressions while playing against predominantly POC and BIPOC," said an anonymous student. "And even when not going up against Beloit they seem to still do it in other schools with mainly non-white athletes.”

A recent example of this is what happened with the Parker student section. The girl’s basketball team traveled to Parker to play a game and found that their student section theme was ‘gangster.’ Coming from such a diverse city, where there is a higher rate of gun violence compared to surrounding cities, this hurt the team, and by association, all of Beloit.

When asked how they felt about the situation, another anonymous student commented, “To be quite honest, I didn’t go to the game, but I did see posts on social media about what had happened, and I think it was insensitive and disrespectful.”

The school apologized for the choice of student section theme four days after the game, saying they will use this incident as a learning opportunity.

Though inappropriate behavior in student sections occurs, this, of course, doesn’t mean that student sections are all bad all the time. Themes can lead to a sense of togetherness throughout the school. Students get to dress up, listen to the band, and cheer for the same goal with their peers.

Sophomore Kori Burnett commented, “I think student sections for the most part are a good thing. They’re a place for everyone who wants to be there to be together and cheer together. No harm in them unless you make it harmful.”

While the majority of students think that having bad student sections reflects the students at school, they also have some ideas on how to improve them.

“Discipline kids who don't meet the bare minimum, like being respectful or not being racist," said another anonymous student. "Those are things that are easy to do. Don’t let something like that go or your school will never change. You can talk to them all you want and motivate them to do better, but you also have to have the discipline to make it actually happen.”