The spirit behind the striped overalls

BY: HAELEY CARPENTER / Multimedia Journalist

Tarleton State University. Full of spirit and tradition. We value integrity, excellence and respect. We wear purple on Thursdays and scream “Go Texans” at every game.

Usually this spirit starts at Duck Camp with the hope that the students will carry the spirit and grow it throughout their time at Tarleton.

But slowly, you start to forget the little things. The chants you sang, the groups you were in and what they meant, the way you felt in the middle yell contest.

Then you forget the bigger things. To wear purple on Thursdays, the words to the color song, and that you’re not supposed to walk on the grass.

You lose the fire, the spirit and maybe even the love for the University.

People Against Not Knowing University Spirit (P.A.N.K.U.S.) are here for those people.

Whether it be at a basketball game or around campus, members of P.A.N.K.U.S. will be there to keep the fire lit.

“I'm here to uplift not only fellow P.A.N.K.U.S. members but any Texans,” President Reagan Johnson said. “Whether that’s in or out of the overalls.”

“We’re all family but we all have the spirit for Tarleton and we all just kind of show up and show out at everything,” Vice President Dezier Martinez said.

“Our main goal is to spread spirit across campus and support all of our fellow Texans,” Sergeant Zimrie Goen said.

P.A.N.K.U.S. is a spirit organization on campus, one of three, and are often overlooked. They don’t have crazy costumes like the Purple Poo or are made up of only guys like the Plowboys. And both organizations have decades on P.A.N.K.U.S..

But P.A.N.K.U.S. does just as much around campus.

They go to all of the home games and try to go to the away games they can. They are on their feet and loud the whole game. They even have a position on their executive leadership team called a Sergeant, which is what Zimrie Goen is.

The Sergeant is in charge of yells and chants, getting members of P.A.N.K.U.S. and other students hyped up at games, and making and coordinating shirts for different types of games. For example, Goen made sure that everyone had a military or camouflage shirt in support.

“I put people in spots at games to maximize our loudness,” Goen said.

They also put on a Toys for Tots drive with donation boxes in the Thompson Student Center.

They go to other school events like the Christmas tree lighting, plays and musicals that the Tarleton Theatre puts on, picking up trash after football games and going to sorority or fraternity events.

“During homecoming week, you may not see us in overalls at every event. But we’re there,” Johnson said.

“A lot of the time, if anyone asks us to be there, we’re there and we'll make it work,” Martinez said.

Texans seeing P.A.N.K.U.S. around campus at events gets people more interested.

“Every time we are anywhere, they’re like ‘oh that's P.A.N.K.U.S.’ or ‘you’re in P.A.N.K.U.S.,’” Martinez said. “Because of this, people reach out to us.”

They see that this group that it’s not just guys and they’re not under a mask. They're just a group of friends that act like family who are hype about Tarleton. They want to spread smiles and remind people of how they felt when they first were accepted.

Johnson was homeschooled so she never got to experience school spirit. She saw other people go all out for their schools and thought that it was not that serious. She never understood the hype around school spirit.

“And then Duck Camp happened and everything changed,” Johnson said.

She felt the spirit of Tarleton and her mama duck told her about P.A.N.K.U.S. and she got involved right away.

Now as president, Johnson and the other members in leadership positions are going through their bylaws and organizing.

“This semester we’ve just been focusing on like cleaning up our bylaws,” Johnson said. “I feel like a good kinda growth.”

Growth is good in any organization. P.A.N.K.U.S. was founded 22 years ago by a group of friends. One of those people was Eddie Nerio.

“There was a core group that was visible the previous year before officially being established,” Nerio said. “We were our own group and we said who we were, and we were P.A.N.K.U.S..”

While starting the organization, Nerio and his friends had known that they were people with a lot of school spirit and wanted to raise the school spirit of others as well. They kept this in mind while thinking of the name.

“We were trying to think of the strangest way to put the name out there,” Nerio said. “People Against Not Knowing University Spirit, if I'm being honest with you that’s just funny.”

They wanted their little group to live on after they graduate. They wanted other people to join and to turn it into an organization and see how it can grow.

“22 years is not something I thought I would see but my heart explodes that students still find value in the organization,” Nerio said.

Nerio now is an advisor for the current P.A.N.K.U.S. members. He still has just as much spirit for the organization and for Tarleton as he did when he was a student.

“As you get older, when you look back at things, they don’t seem as rowdy as it was when you were in it,” Nerio said. “But [P.A.N.K.U.S.] is still a loud and rowdy bunch.”