Storming the field was one thing. We get it. In that moment, months of intense emotions spilled dramatically forth as hundreds of Spartans hopped the fence and poured onto Glenbrook South’s brand new turf. Administrators looked a little displeased, and some of the football coaches, perhaps fearing for the safety of their players, got a little angry. But, ultimately, the giant teenage mob bounced around at midfield for a few minutes and then rather unceremoniously dispersed, no harm done. It was a beautiful moment and something that many of us will remember for a long time—a school united under the lights on West Lake Ave.

But rewind a little bit, back to the week leading up to the rivalry game and the turf-mashing spectacle at South. A Facebook invitation went out to a massive number of GBN and GBS students, encouraging them to come out to the rivalry football game in support of their respective halves of District 225. All innocent enough in theory.

Before long, though, the trash-talking started. First there were just a few posts, and then they began to multiply as students from both sides tried to one-up each other, and before long it was more or less out of control. Some messages advocated actual violence, with one by a GBN student encouraging the sending of a South player “to the hospital.” They continued to grow progressively more obscene as time passed, and, when the event’s wall became literally pornographic, someone had the merciful presence of mind to delete the page. Notifications quieted.

The spirit of the group survived, though, and between that night and game day, social media was flooded with insults hurled at the opposing school and its members. “[Expletive] South” was a favorite of our own student body.

All of the bitter rivalry would not be contained on the Internet, as it turned out, and the two sides continued to antagonize each other on game day. Principal Paul Pryma looked at first nonplussed and then pretty obviously upset as our student section started chanting its two-word mantra, transposed rather unfortunately from so many statuses and hashtags into actual verbal speech.

It’s likely that no one from South was really all that hurt by the chants—that is, if they could even hear them from across the field. It’s also true that one can hear far more offensive things just walking down the hallway, and that the same kind of stuff was certainly directed back at us.

Stop for a second, though, and consider what might be not-quite-right about this picture. Fans packed the stands wearing jerseys with the numbers and names of their fallen friends and classmates. Wrist upon wrist could be seen sporting a Compassion It bracelet. Oh, and a crowd of teenagers yelled the f-word at GBS in unison.

The fact is that what should have been a wholly positive experience was marred by the introduction of speech that, regardless of intent, was angry, hateful and very patently negative. All of this in spite of the ideal of compassion that we had supposedly joined together to support as a school. Your hypocrisy is showing, Spartans. And it’s not flattering.

So, fine, remember the field-storming as a highlight of your time at Glenbrook North. Remember jumping up and down at the 50-yard line, together as one with your school. But the part where it was unclear if that uniting was an expression of love for our community or hatred for another? Let’s see if we can forget that.