Stonehill’s New Tradition: Purple Fridays

By Owen Woodward

Stonehill is constantly coming up with new innovative and exciting ways to bring the college campus together. A recent new tradition being introduced by the Student Government Association is Purple Fridays.

SGA has done a fantastic job at promoting this tradition, sending out weekly reminder emails for students to partake and check in with their instagram account @sga_stonehill for more updates on campus wide events, club spotlights, and reels of students partaking in the purple festivities.

This tradition is very low stakes and requires minimal effort from the students. Participation is easy, even as the school year gets busier, this is a way to keep the students connected. They can wear any piece of purple clothing or an article of Stonehill merchandise (you don’t have to just be in purple).

You might be familiar with having a school pride day in high school, where similarly you’d wear school merchandise or your school's colors. This new Stonehill tradition is continuing this energy taken from high school and bringing this spirit to college.

It brings a great sense of community to our campus, bonding us all in our school pride purple, displaying to each other as well as visitors, prospective students, and alumni that we are all proud to be skyhawks.

Members of SGA claim that this tradition was brought to Stonehill to combine school unity, motivate students to wear school colors, and to excite campus engagement. This theme is also extremely beneficial to the college campus as well because getting into the habit of wearing your Stonehill gear on and off campus, can help bring yourself connections from Stonehill alumni as well as bring the college attention from those who are interested.

For extra motivation to break out your Stonehill gear, here are some incentives; SGA has been graciously handing out gift cards (Panera, Dunkin, etc) to all those dressed in stonehill merch of purple gear on Fridays. This goes for anyone partaking in the theme: students, faculty, and staff.

All prizes are generously sponsored by both the Student Government Association and the Athletic Department.

On Fridays, members of SGA scavenge around the campus with these prizes and hand them out to the first they see following the theme.

These traditions have been spreading to other organizations on campus as well. For example, the Group Exercise classes joined in on the fun, matching them with Purple Friday’s theme with a Purple Friday Spin class! This way students can match both themes at once, and partake in the Stonehill spirit as well as get a good workout.