“When Northeast was established, three communities came together– Bethany, Havelock, and UNI Place. When those three communities came together, they needed to decide what the school colors were going to be, but they didn’t come to a decision. So when they started, they said, ‘We’re just going to leave the school colors black and white for now, until a decision can be made– either by the school board, or through the school itself’. Well, the colors stuck. So they just kept black and white as the school colors,” stated Northeast principal, Mr.Glathar.

For a bit more than a decade, there has been controversy over our school colors. I’m sure everyone who has been at this school for even a year, has heard of the issue with our school colors. But a lot of people aren’t certain where it all began.

According to Mr. Heath, former coach and current athletic director, the controversy over the color purple as Northeast’s school color began in the late 1980s or mid 1990s. It started when the basketball team began to wear jerseys with purple on it. Now, the first set of uniforms only had a sliver of dark purple, which was hardly noticeable. The basketball team ended up adding more and more purple, without letting the athletic director, at the time, know. Later on, a thick, purple stripe ran along the side of the basketball warm up pants. When people saw this, a lot of them flipped out and were offended that others would try to include purple into the traditional black and white school colors.

Personally, I love the idea of purple being a second additional color, or an accent color. It adds literal color, unlike the current black and white; black and white are not actually colors. For you science lovers out there, you already know that black and white are not colors. According to Seattle Post Intelligence, a color is actually visible light that has a certain wavelength. However, black lacks any wavelengths of visible light, and white contains all wavelengths of visible light. Thus, black and white aren’t actual colors. It would be nice to have a true color that would further create an identity for Northeast.

Apparently I’m not the only one who is in support of purple being an additional color for Northeast. Table-1 shows, out of the total of 138 people surveyed, about 88% of them would support purple as an additional color. Many students argued that various cities incorporate black and white into their uniforms, jerseys, shirts, etc., so having purple as an additional color would make Northeast stand out. However, right now, we don’t stand out much because the colors we have are the same colors that other high schools include with their original school colors.

Table-1 ***Total/percentage is only from all of the people who are content with the colors black, white, and silver.

Many people don’t like to accept change, but it is, in a lot of cases, a good thing. Adding purple as an additional color doesn’t mean taking out and ignoring the primary, traditional colors. Based on everything I’ve heard regarding the controversy, the only thing stopping purple from being a part of the family, is tradition. But like all other traditions, as years go by, the tradition shifts and changes a bit. Halloween and Christmas traditions aren’t the same as they were 50 years ago. Over time, new traditions are formed, and it isn’t anything unusual.

Adding purple as a secondary color isn’t as big of a deal as certain people make it out to be. It’s an idea of the students here at Northeast that shouldn’t be shot down. The older students at Northeast have graduated now, and high school is in the past for them. But this is now the school of the current students, and we should at least have a say in how Northeast is as a community.