The Pandering.
1. Reference the school's alma mater or fight song or motto or something of that nature. CHEERS!
2. Your school is awesome, unlike your rival school. CHEERS!
3. Reference one (or maybe even a few) popular school locales/events. CHEERS!
4. Reference a popular faculty member. CHEERS!
5. Reference the sports teams. CHEERS!
I agree... reference pop culture too and you'll ge cheers too...
our Valedictorian gave a pretty good speech... and I graduated in 2000 and our entire class in the school district was referred to as "Smoke-free 2000". It was drilled into us since we were in 1st grade but it died off in middle school and everyone forgot about that project... "Smoke-free 2000".
And just about that time Star Wars was getting rebooted with Episode 1, and the last thing she said was so memorable to me..
... "Class of Smoke-Free 2000, may the force be with you!!!!" and everyone erupted with cheer and were high fiving each other cause we had all forgotten all about that project... cause I'm positive not everyone was smoke-free by 2000.