Thousands of new and returning MSU students sang the fight song and posed for a class photograph while ringing in the MSU athletic season Thursday at Spartan Spirit.
A Welcome Week pep rally, Spartan Spirit was held inside the newly remodeled Spartan Stadium. The ninth-annual event was hosted by the Student Alumni Foundation and the MSU Alumni Association. It featured familiar faces and welcomed new people to the university community while taking part in different MSU traditions.
"It is a great kick off to the athletic sports season here at Michigan State," MSU assistant women's basketball coach AnnMarie Gilbert said. "It is a great welcome for them by some of their peers, by some of the returnees, too. But it is really a confidence booster, there is a lot of support. This group seems to get larger every year at this event, and I think it is a testament to what is going on in athletics here - things are growing, our facilities are expanding."
Gilbert and several other coaches introduced their teams and some of the athletes, all of whom welcomed the crowd and invited spectators to come to the different games.
Unique to the program this year, the sponsoring groups decided to celebrate the sesquicentennial, MSU's 150th anniversary. Organizers decided to try and make the Guinness World Records by taking the largest-ever class photo.
Students attending didn't know about the part of history they were participating in, but many said they were still excited to take part in some of their favorite MSU traditions.
"I get more excited as I get older because you get a little more attached to the school, I know more people, I know cheerleaders, and I know people in the band," marketing senior Michelle Meyer said. "Spartan Spirit is awesome, and the drum line is awesome, and football season is going to rock because it is the funnest thing of college."
While this pep rally is a favorite event for Meyer, geological sciences sophomore Terry Stines was new to the Spartan scene.
"I just transferred here from Xavier University, and this is my first time in the stadium," she said.
Stines said she is excited to take part in athletics and become part of the Spartan family, since her last school didn't have a football team.
East Lansing Mayor Mark Meadows, who attends the pep rally every year, wanted to be present to welcome the new members of the East Lansing community and have them initiated by reciting "Go Green, Go White."
"MSU is all in East Lansing, so for the kids coming in, which is who this event is designed for, are people who are going to live in East Lansing for five or six years at minimum," Meadows said. "We are welcoming the new kids into the community."
After attending academic convocations and helping students move into their dorms for several hours, MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon welcomed the students at Spartan Spirit, and said she had attended the event while she served as provost, but never as the president.
"This is a first for the students we are greeting today who are having a lot of first experiences, and so am I and Provost (Kim) Wilcox," she said.
Wilcox introduced himself to the students and reminisced about some of his favorite times at MSU while a student - such as sitting in section 13 of the stadium and watching the band rush through the tunnel. As the head academic official at the university, he stressed the importance of pairing a good education with strong Spartan pride, which pumped the crowd up for the upcoming athletic season.
"MSU is all about studying hard," he said. "But it is also about playing hard, and this is where we play hard."
