Spirit Cup Scandal? How One Junior's Email Sparked a Campus News Debate

By Andrew M '27

At 11:57 AM on the morning of Wednesday, December 10th, one campus news email thread turned into a debate about transparency, record-keeping, and even tone regarding the Spirit Committee’s biggest endeavor: The Spirit Cup. It began when junior Kyle Harwitz ‘27 sent an email to campus news raising concerns about the accuracy and legitimacy of the Spirit Cup standings. His email questioned how points were being tracked, whether the process was consistent, and asked the Spirit Team to publicly release a detailed log of all points awarded throughout the semester.

Within the span of nine hours, members of the Spirit Team (led by Ellie Rotblat ‘26 and JK Fa ‘26) responded with a lengthy explanation of the Spirit Cup point-counting system. They shared a breakdown of each event where points could be awarded, when points were added, defended their record-keeping practices, and addressed common misunderstandings around how students are supposed to sign in at Spirit Cup events. Their commitment to transparency was so honored that they released receipts in the form of a document and a screenshot of a spreadsheet. However, Rotblat and Fa’s reply did acknowledge some limitations of this record-keeping system (like the unsuccessful attempt to publish a live tracker in the Campus app). 

The exchange escalated when JK’s message took on a joking tone, prompting him to challenge the calculation of his own points and request corrections. After verifying a few discrepancies, Spirit granted additional points to the junior class and updated the standings–still not enough to change the results. 

Later that evening, junior Natania Biniam ‘27 stepped in with a broader critique, calling out the tone used toward Kyle, expressing worry about inconsistencies in how attendance was tracked, and citing an example, the boys’ varsity soccer senior night, where she believed juniors attended the game without receiving credit. Her email sparked support from several classmates (Hank Roberts ‘27 and Aida Amin ‘27) and reopened questions about fairness and communication surrounding the Spirit Cup. Since then, Biniam has stated that she didn’t mean to increase tensions and was only trying to support her fellow junior, Kyle Harwitz. 

We reached out to Ms. Biniam for comment: 

“I stepped in because I felt like Kyle was being ganged up on. I know things can come across differently over email, […] asking for the point breakdown shouldn’t be this much of a problem, especially since the spirit team itself offered to do so publicly at assembly. I thought Kyle was being attacked and felt a personal responsibility to stand up for him.” 

Spirit responded again, this time more reflectively. They apologized for their tone, explained the separation between Student Council dance tracking and Spirit Cup systems, clarified why certain games counted while others didn’t, and reiterated the amount of work that goes into running the competition. 

By the end of the night, the thread had shifted from what began as a simple request for transparency into a larger discussion about communication, trust, and how a new school tradition is managed. Temperatures decreased, and the thread seemingly ended, yet the existence of the thread does raise opportunities for self-reflection for all parties involved. 

Ellie Rotblat, a member of the Spirit Committee, answered some of our questions: 

1. How can Spirit improve on ensuring that students’ participation at school events is accurately and consistently tracked? 

"Going forward, we’ll focus more on clear communication with the student body about which games are for the Spirit Cup and the use of QR codes. Since this is the first semester of the Spirit Cup, we’ve had to make a lot of quick decisions on how we can make the system work to the best of its ability, and QR codes were our preliminary fix, and they worked pretty well overall. I don’t think our dance ticket sales tracker will change in any way. We’ve used that system for years, and only now have we ever had to extrapolate that data beyond the business office. I’m not sure what went wrong for Kyle, but we’ll pay extra attention to make sure all tickets purchased at the door get logged, because maybe that was the issue."

2. Are there other ways to track who is at the games? How will you make the QR code and other self-tracking options more accessible/visible? 

"For our first two Spirit Cup games, I (Ellie) tracked it all by hand on a spreadsheet by making a list of every CPS student in the room and labeling name and grade. It got really overwhelming and time-consuming on Cougar Night when we had over 170 students, and it wasn’t a sustainable practice. Instead, we started printing out several QR codes per game and instructing students to scan, as well as distributing them amongst students in the stands in each grade to have them spread the word. The first time we used them, I sent a campus news email explaining the addition of the QR codes. I think the QR code turns into the same issue we see with Common Classroom, where students forget to sign in. I haven’t heard of anyone not being able to find a QR code when they look for one, but we expected not every student who attended a game would remember to scan, and there wasn’t really any way for us to get around that."

3. As this is the pilot semester of the Spirit Cup, what do you appreciate about the feedback? What has Spirit learned, and how will you address similar issues in the future? 

"I think we’re really hyped to see how invested people are getting in the scores. It shows that our initiative is doing its job of getting people more interested in school spirit activities, and we’ve had the numbers to back it up in a lot of events. As for issues, I think we’ve seen firsthand how much people value transparency in our process. We wish we could’ve had a live tracker, and we had conversations with Preston Kwei and Marcus Gallardo of the iTeam to develop one, and they did, and it looked so cool. We’re really sad it couldn’t come to fruition, but it made the website crash repeatedly, and we didn’t want to divert too much of the iTeam’s energy to something like that. We worked hard to lay out our platform at the beginning of the year and stick to it, which we did. I think in the future, some tweaks could be made to Spirit Cup to make it a more accurate depiction of what school spirit looks like at College Prep, but as I said, we really wanted to stick to the point values we assigned for each activity at the beginning of the year. A lot of Spirit Cup hinges on showing up for your school at outside events, like dances and sports events, and doesn't have as much reward for in-school activities like Spirit Week, which I think surprised a lot of people when the points started adding up the way they did. We’ve received a lot of positive feedback from athletes and families about Cougar Night, Dig Pink, and bringing more fans to games, and that is a student culture we will continue to facilitate next semester." 

4. What do you want to tell the CPS community about the Spirit Cup? 

"I think we can not underemphasize how much the Spirit Cup has increased the workload of our Spirit Team. Aside from the actual sporting events, there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes planning that we do that no other Spirit Team has been tasked with, and we’ve had to deliver a lot more assembly announcements to the school to announce point totals and upcoming games. We put a lot of effort into those because we know getting people to participate in things starts with us embodying school spirit to the public. All the work has been so worth it to see our community show up for one another."

The Radar also reached out to Kyle Harwitz for comment: 

1. What made you decide to email the entire campus rather than reaching out privately first?

“The reason I first emailed the entire campus was I was thinking more along the lines of transparency to everyone, and also having them publicly release it would sate the curiosity of anyone else (I was assuming I was not the only one interested in their record-keeping) who wanted some more clarity on the increase in points and how it was tracked.”

2. Were you thinking about point tracking before the final Spirit Cup standings were released? If not, do you claim any responsibility for not ensuring your participation was tracked? 

“I wasn’t really thinking about the point tracking, but honestly, that’s partly what I think could use a bit of improvement. I feel like if they even just had a Google site where they updated points (which would be really easy to do, without even needing the iteam) that would help there be more transparency, more engagement, and more understanding of the spirit cup system as a whole. In regards to the points I had that were not tracked, I do now understand I forgot to scan the QR code at the senior night I went to, but it does shed some more uncertainty on the point system since I bought tickets to both dances and yet the points were not tracked, which raises some questions in regards to more discrepancies that might together be somewhat significant. It is understandable, however, since Spirit does have to keep track of the points of hundreds of students at a time.”

3. Do you think the Spirit Cup system needs structural changes, or were you mainly pushing for clearer communication?

“I was mainly pushing for clearer communication, but (as I also mentioned in my previous answer) I think that it would be helpful if they could have a public document to show a comprehensive list of point tracking and increases, as well as increase reasons.”

Kyle provided the Radar with a link to a sample Google site he created: https://sites.google.com/thecollegepreparatoryschool.org/examplespiritpointtrack/home 

4. Would you still send the same message, knowing about everything that ensued after? 

“Even knowing what ensued after, I think I would send the same email. I know it was quite provocative and evoked a lot of responses, getting a bit heated, but I feel that it was overall helpful, as it’s a start towards what I was advocating for the whole time: transparency. Even though some people may have gotten upset in it, I think it was worth it because at the end of the day, it’s just an email, and the spirit cup isn’t something so serious that everyone should be getting worked up about it, and my email was just to hopefully accomplish (or at least take a step towards) a clearer understanding for everyone.”

All in all, the night ended peacefully, and both parties agreed that it is up to everyone at CPS to maintain a strong sense of spirit and ensure that this new tradition is correctly managed.