The environment at Palo Alto High School’s home football games is truly a great experience for everyone in attendance. The team itself is relatively good, there is plenty of cheap food, the cheerleaders keep the fans excited, the student section is always loud and rowdy and when the band plays Paly’s fight song “Green and White Forever,” the excitement at Hod Ray Field gets cranked up a few notches. Regardless of the score, there is no denying that both the student section and the band raise the intensity level in the stands.

However, the Associate Student Body (ASB) recently decided to move the student section to the opposite end of the stands, away from the band. It is the opinion of The Campanile that separating the band and the student section reduces the overall experience and exciting environment of a Paly football game.

The original reason for ASB moving the student section away from the band was because students in the student section usually remain standing throughout the game, which can obstruct the view of fans sitting in neighboring sections.

While it is a completely justifiable reason to move the student section, The Campanile believes ASB moved the student section to the wrong place.

The obstructed view for other fans problem could have easily been solved without separating the students from their peers in the band. Instead of moving the student section farther toward the snack shack, ASB should simply have moved it so that the students are on the other side of the band, thus having the band’s section act as a buffer zone between students and other Viking fans. ASB has also said that they cannot move the band away from the end of the bleachers because it would make it difficult for the band to get onto the field at halftime. However, the past has proven that the band can manage to get onto the field just fine when they are not at the end of the bleachers.

For the 2010 and 2011 football seasons, the band was located toward the middle of the bleachers, under the press box, and there were never any incidents during those seasons of the band not getting onto the field fast enough.

Simply put, The Campanile believes that the student section and band should be reunited and placed next to each other in the stands. It has worked in the past and it will work in the future. This is simply a case of ASB overthinking something and trying to solve a problem that does not exist.