This is a sponsored feature. All opinions are 100% from Her Campus.
When you think of school spirit at Santa Clara, what is the first thing that comes to mind? For me, its the Ruff Riders and the phrase “Go Broncos!” If you don’t know, the Ruff Riders team is a group of students whose goal is to promote school spirit and connect the school through spirit. I was lucky enough to interview some of the team about their current and future goals and events. Needless to say, Ruff Riders has a lot of awesome stuff in store.
As many of you may know, Ruff Riders has done a lot of work to increase their presence on social media. This quarter they focused on “#GoBroncos”. According to President Aaron Poor, the campaign sets out to demonstrate that, “we can love our school only as much as we love ourselves.” Santa Clara students reflect this idea when they use terms like “that’s so Go Broncos” to describe positive things in our lives.
Outside of social media, the Ruff Riders table outside of Benson every Thursday from one to three and hand out shirts, play some great tunes, and play a community building game. The most recent game was “Stump the Ruff Riders” where student come up and ask a Ruff Rider a question about anything they learned over the quarter, and if they can’t answer the question they get a smarties. Ruff Riders also hosts an “Educated Tailgater campaign” where various houses can sign up via a Google doc to hold a tailgate before attending a Santa Clara event.
The start of winter quarter is an exciting time for the Ruff Riders. Although Aaron Poor will be abroad, the Ruff Rider program will be left in the competent hands of Carson Whisler (who Aaron likes to call “the president reincarnate.”) Spirited Broncos can look forward to awesome tailgates for the basketball season and more on campus activities. Aaron has also divided the student body into three groups based on age and the evolution of a bronco. The freshman are the foals, the sophomores and juniors are the colts, and those over 21 are the stallions. This is another way the Ruff Riders are trying to really tie Santa Clara with student identity!
In addition to fun events, the Ruff Riders create a new theme every quarter to highlight the positive aspects of our Bronco community. This fall was “#iscool” where they talked about positive things in our community like school and family. Next quarter is a Thomas Jefferson quote, “The harder I work the luckier I get.” They plan to hand out dice to represent the lucky component.
So come out and support your Ruff Riders this year and remember that school spirit is very #GoBroncos!
Help out our Ruff Riders by putting any cheers you know in the Cheer Central Google doc. You can also requests songs you want to hear during time outs or half time here.