I know a lot of people are guilty of doing this, but I have to say nay to wearing LSU or any other college merchandise on campus. 

I think almost every student from Louisiana owns an LSU T-shirt for one reason or another. LSU is the college we’ve all practically grown up with. At least one member of everybody’s family is a die-hard LSU fan. I can list a couple in my family off the top of my head. We are proud of the fact that a Louisiana college can compete so highly with other colleges around the country and succeed, but we also need to show a different kind of pride when present at school: Lion Pride.

From the perspective of a Southeastern athlete, when I see other people wearing apparel that is not Southeastern, it’s like you are not supporting the teams that play for our university. We do compete against LSU among the other schools I see represented in the various T-shirts, sweatshirts and hats around campus. Soccer usually plays LSU in the spring as well as baseball, so seeing somebody wear a LSU T-shirt or Southern Miss hat is like a slap in the face.

We should show some pride for this school. We should be wearing Southeastern merchandise, showing how much we love being a Lion. We’ve made great accomplishments in both academics and athletics over the past few years. Our professors are great and care about their students, and our athletics just came off of a great year, winning their conferences. Our school in general is becoming bigger and more recognized. Why are we not proud of this? Why do we not show our Lion Pride in every way?

We cannot just show it at football games, where our support and spirit usually sky-rockets through the roof, but if we want to be better as a college, be more unified, we should start acting like it. All it takes is one simple thing: when you wake up in the morning, favor something green and gold and Lion Up.