In recent years, Unity Week has been rebranded to promote peaceful enthusiasm and schoolwide pride, but past Rally Days have become notorious for the hectic energy and at times, riot-like activity. But many students don’t know very much about the evolution of Unity Week over the years, and why there has been such a focus on togetherness recently.
Jake Disston, a Universal 9th Grade math teacher at Berkeley High School who graduated from BHS in 1987, recalls his own experience on rally day as very intense. “There were, you know, 3500 students and all the teachers and everybody in it. So it was just raucous and loud and crazy,” Disston said. When he was a student, Unity Week was a large competition between all grades at BHS, creating an added level of animosity. “The administration kept track of points through the week, and then (whichever grade) was loudest at the end got a certain number of points, and then the Spirit Cup was awarded,” Disston said.
Now that he’s returned to BHS as a teacher, Disston has re-lived the Unity Week experience through a different perspective. Freshmen are typically the students who are the most worried, as BHS has a culture of social hierarchy that each grade falls into. Freshmen are new to the school, and with the exception of stories passed down from older siblings or friends, there is generally little knowledge about Rally Day, adding a sense of paranoia to many spirit-related activities.“As a freshman teacher, or (having) mostly freshmen in my classes, they don't know really what to expect,” Disston said.
According to Philip Halpern, an Art of Video teacher who’s worked at BHS for 32 years, the school’s pivot to schoolwide togetherness was fairly recent. From his early years at BHS, he recalled masses of students packed into the same area, due to BHS’ large student body. “My first memory of rally day was 3000 kids jammed into the Donahue Gym screaming their lungs out and stamping their feet. I feared a bleacher collapse,” Halpern said.
While Unity Week and Rally Day have always been fairly intense, John Villavicencio, the Director of Student Activities at BHS who has worked at the school since 2004, commented that there was a very intentional transition to create school-wide unity after the 2012 Unity Week. That year, the school had a high amount of alcohol and substance use among students, as well as many public safety concerns. BHS ultimately decided to cancel the entire week in 2013 due to the previous year’s catastrophic events.
Rally Day hasn’t been canceled since 2013, but staff are still fairly concerned about the potential outcome each year. “(Rally Day is an) outlet in a sense, which is fine, but what it's done, unfortunately, is it's made a lot of adults on campus very hesitant about creating a space for students to celebrate,” Villavicencio said. While it’s always possible that students will get out of hand during Unity Week, BHS admin has tried different activities throughout the week to direct school spirit in a different direction. This year, each class decorated a certain floor in a different building. There was also a pep rally on Thursday, October 17, 2024, which hadn’t been done before. According to Villavicencio, the planning that went into the pep rally this year made Unity Week and Rally Day feel more official, and a little less disorderly. “(The pep rally is) a new angle that we haven't tried in a while to this scale into this level of preparation, because we actually have set things up, and … got a lot of people involved weeks ahead of time,” he said.
In recent years, students have responded relatively well to Unity Week’s new focus. While there can always be new problems and recurring issues each year, according to Halpern, most of what he has seen recently has been fun and positive. Halpern found that the recent focus on school unanimity has improved student behavior over unity week. “(The rebrand) has certainly helped. Back in the old days, too many kids used Spirit Week to do really stupid stuff,” Halpern said. One of the things Villavicencio expressed hope about is students utilizing the opportunity to express themselves during Unity Week and Rally Day. “I do think students need this creative outlet. They need some prodding, some motivation, some inspiration, and opportunity to do something that's bigger themselves,” he said. Even though Unity Week and Rally Day have caused a lot of mistakes, students have learned from the past. And the more attention is put on unity, the more BHS can grow and leave the past perceptions of Rally Day behind.
