This semester at Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy (HBHA) there has been one topic every student has been talking about:  HBHA’s school colors slowly changing from maroon to blue.

HBHA’s Head of School, Adam Tilove, said, “Once you change the logo and the font, that’s your new brand, and that’s supposed to extend to everything…  If we look at our logo, there’s no maroon on it.”  

High school freshman Gabrielle Sosland said, “No one knew about it until this year when they told us all they were changing the colors of the numbers for the [class]rooms.” She continues, “What I’ve heard about this whole color change is that it was changed around five years ago.”

 Noa Levine, a sophomore at HBHA said, “I heard about it a few weeks ago and saw they were getting new jerseys with the light blue color.”

While discussing the color changes around the school, senior Evelyn Brand says, “It’s kinda been a small gradual thing… No one told me, it was a ‘by the way, the new uniforms are blue’.”

When something changes in a small community, there are usually a variety of opinions about the topic. In this debate, there were three prominent opinions. For example, sophomore Alex Rubin said, “I like blue. Blue’s a solid color.”

The most popular opinion shared was that students did not like the idea of HBHA changing its colors. Sosland said, “I actually do not think it’s a good idea. I think that HBHA has been known for its entire existence as maroon.”

Sosland also added, “Maroon isn’t incorporated in other schools, and we aren’t like other schools, we are a Jewish day school.”

 Levine, however, said, “It’s not a huge deal to me…It’s just school colors.”

When asking the students, ‘when you graduate from high school, if someone asked what your school colors were, what would you tell them?’ Sosland responded, “I would probably tell them that it’s blue, but I would not be happy with that.”

Rubin answered, “I’d say maroon and blue because the first half of high school was maroon the second half was blue.”

While asking Brand the same question, she said “maroon,” but when asking her, ‘if she was an 8th grader being asked this question would that change her mind.’ Her response was, “I think I would be more bothered because it would impact me more.” 

Sosland says, “I understand rebranding is important and keeping people engaged in HBHA [is important], but I still think that HBHA is still doing a great job of everything they’re doing while still being maroon.”

“I think that by changing the color, it’s ruining tradition. Our school colors are maroon, it’s always been like that,” said Brand.

There was recently a change in the boy’s basketball jerseys. Sosland explains, “If we show up in a blue uniform to every sports game, everyone else is blue and red.” 

While Rubin shared, “We definitely need new jerseys, change it up a bit.”

Whether we fully transition to blue right away, or if it’s a gradual process, the school color will always be maroon to a majority of the students at HBHA.