Farmer Pride is seen all over school, from the Rowdy Crowd at sports games to the huge amount of participation in spirit days. We see it all day, every day from teachers and students alike. You can feel the positive, uniting force all over our school, an energy that has been around since the school opened. It brings us together as one.

So why are we fighting? In the past few months, we’ve seen everything from club and organizations members bashing their own members and those from other groups to physical scuffles in the hallways.

Yes, we are the “fighting” Farmers, but that fighting is meant to be against other schools in the spirit of competition, not against our own. We are supposed to be a unified force to be reckoned with, and fighting within our school is not helping us to realize that goal.

Within our student body, there are differences but that should never stop us from supporting and respecting each other. By not caring for others, we drag ourselves down too. By hurting others we drag down not only our school members, but the community and all it has ever stood for.

Our time should be spent helping our school and our community rather than fighting. The community around us is often affected by what’s going on at our school.

Arguments between people are bound to happen with a school of our size. However they should never lead to hatred or animosity towards a person or group of people. This can lead to internal rivalries which are ones we never want to keep.

Rivalries against other schools? Yes.

Between our own school clubs, teams and organizations? No.

We need to work together to make sure every problem or conflict is resolved in a good and helpful way. We never want to leave any anger behind. We need to replace all the anger with understanding.

Once we see the world through others eyes, we often are able to end problems before they escalate. Try to look not at how we are different, but at how we are similiar. Once we do this we are likely to find that we’re not too different after all.