I've seen it asked several times now, so I thought I'd make a post here about it. Our class colors are black and white.
Yes, our school colors were blue and white, along with, at the time, the increasing and somewhat controversial, red (but that's the topic of another post).
If you recall, we had a class meeting where we picked our class colors, class motto, and class flower. In our apparent attempt to represent our subversive and disruptive qualities, we picked "black and white" for the colors and "we won't back down" for the motto.
And I suppose we felt the need to balance all that subversiveness, because we picked the "yellow rose" -- a symbol of friendship -- for our class flower.
But upon deeper inspection, the choice of colors turns out to have more meaning than we probably realized at the time. The Wikipedia article on the topic of Black and White Dualism mentions, among other things, the symbology of opposites, and the dichotomy of day and night and good and evil.
Our motto, well, I'm not sure of the exact origin. Most of my googling turns up music from 2004 and later. I like to believe we were thinking of the song I Won't Back Down, one of Tom Petty's first singles, released ten years prior. I particularly enjoy Pearl Jam's cover.
Well I know what's right, I got just one life
in a world that keeps on pushin' me around
but I'll stand my ground, and I won't back down
I think this song goes perfectly with the Good and Evil concept of our class colors. "I know what's right" says the lyrics, "and I won't back down."
Changing the "I" to "We" is appropriate given the final piece, the yellow rose, which represents friendship and platonic love. Perhaps we knew that standing up to the world and all the bad in it would require more than just resolve. Friendship is key.
So I think these three things tie together quite nicely, and while I don't find much wisdom in many of the choices we made back then, I continue to find value and enlightenment in these three.
