Wisconsin High School Students Protest WIAA’s Chant Guidelines

“Examples of chants the WIAA now deems unacceptable include: “You can’t do that”, “Fundamentals”, “Air ball“, “We can’t hear you”, Season’s over”, and “Scoreboard“, among others. Paulson said he appreciates the WIAA stressing sportsmanship.

As for his “WIAA acceptable chant” Twitter rant yesterday, Bilas said he was inspired by when he was in school and Duke fans were reprimanded by The Washington Post about their behavior at games.

“We have speed limits and there may be times when people exceed the limit, but we don’t lower it”, he said. Gehl’s tweet has not been deleted from her account since the suspension.

“I was thinking, ‘How did they get it so quickly?'” Jill Gehl said of the WIAA seeing her daughter’s tweet.

High School basketball player April Gehl has been suspended for five basketball games for a tweet, according to the Appleton Post-Crescent. Officials say while they don’t believe students chanting “USA” is unsportsmanlike when it refers to the United States of America, they say it’s also been used to disguise a phrase which could be unsportsmanlike. Rhinelander students are not allowed to make comments or chants that are degrading to an athlete, and when someone crosses a line, it is addressed right away.

“You have to lay those expectations, what they can say and what they can’t say and build that rapport with the ringleaders in the crowd”, she said. “Additionally, we continue to remind our students that colleges, universities, the Armed Forces and employers are checking social media of applicants”. We understand wanting to ban students from using obscene or vulgar language, but banning a chant like “we can’t hear you”, one meant to fire up both student sections, is well, stupid. “To change it now is tough”, Ryan Anderson, Menomonee Falls High School athletic director. (It’s a family newspaper, folks, but you get the idea). He said the policy is nothing new – but one that has been in place for years.

The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association sent an email to member schools asking for student sections to tone down their chants.

The executive director of the National Federation of State High School Associations said Wisconsin’s policy isn’t overly restrictive and fits his group’s “universal emphasis” on sportsmanship.