By The Editorial Board
In spring 2015, students were asked by the administration to complete an online survey about their experience at VHS. One of the questions asked if we felt we had a role in the school’s decision-making process.
The senior class were freshmen then, and few of us gave it much thought. We had not been here long enough to be aware of the decisions being made, so few of us had any insight into the school’s policy-making process, let alone an opinion to offer.
We’ve filled out that same survey every year since, and many of us on the Editorial Board have repeatedly declined to criticize the administration for undemocratic decision-making.
Indeed, at the time the survey was sent out last January, we didn’t really have any reason to — if anything, we were pleased with the changes being made. Over the prior two years, SMART periods had increased in frequency on non-block weeks from two to three times per week, and we no longer had to begin the work period in our original, assigned SMART classrooms — a change no doubt made in order to reflect the opinions students had put forth in surveys sent out by the administration about SMART periods.
Unbeknownst to us at the time of the annual survey, there were other student-suggested changes coming as well. The administration was about to successfully re-introduce and pass the Proposition I bond to revamp the school’s athletic facilities, a move that was originally suggested by The Riptide Editorial Board after the initial proposition failed in 2016. They were also about to announce plans to change the upstairs bathrooms to be accessible to all genders, something that the Queer Spectrum Alliance club had been pushing for two years.
But at the same time that these developments were starting to take shape, other changes were sneaking into the halls of VHS as well (all irony intended). Yes, March 10, 2017 saw the introduction of hall passes, prohibiting us from leaving a classroom without a vomit-yellow (in some cases horrendous-green) laminated slip of paper that was originally well over 8.5 by 11 inches in size.
And it wasn’t more than a few months after that that we began to hear about GoGuardian, the computer program that allows teachers to monitor their students’ activities on Chromebooks.
If you couldn’t guess, these decisions were not proposed — or supported, for that matter — by students.
In fact, based on recent developments — no eating outside during lunch, Character Strong activities, stricter no-cell-phone policy enforcement during SMART and reinstatement of SMART passes — it would seem that our positive responses in the annual survey were not received by the administration as a good thing that should be maintained, but rather as something that needed to be changed.
In all seriousness, this isn’t just about the administration “doing things without consulting the students” — it’s about them both literally and functionally abrogating the very changes they made to meet students’ desires in the first place.
The reinstatement of SMART passes is the most obvious example of this kind of ruling by fiat — the passes were scrapped last year after students complained about the time wasted waiting in line to get a pass to visit another teacher — but the new Character Strong curriculum does it too; Character Strong fills 25 SMART periods throughout the year, which is more or less the same number of SMART periods that were gained a year ago when an additional SMART period was added to each non-block schedule week.
Granted, students aren’t always the best people to set school rules, both from a pedagogical standpoint and from a motive standpoint. The return of SMART passes and the no-cell-phone policy came primarily in response to a large number of students making poor use of the liberties given to them during SMART period (talking with friends, texting, etc.).
In the words of Principal Danny Rock, these liberties had caused a “decrease in productivity” (see “New Policies,” page 3).
What’s strange, though, is that there is nothing productive whatsoever about Character Strong. Not only does the curriculum prevent us from getting work done, but it also falls far short of achieving its goals of building a sense of community within SMART periods.
While teaching kids to shake each other’s hands and calling the gesture a “webby,” or having them self-identify as ice cream may help 5-year-olds become friends, it’s unlikely to work with a bunch of teenagers.
On the flipside, we may just bond over a shared hatred of the curriculum.
The other purported purpose of Character Strong is to help teachers build relationships with the students in their SMART periods. We can empathize with that, and we do, but only in the way that you might empathize with a dog who just bit a third of your leg off because it was still hungry after its first six meals of the day. Obviously we don’t want the dog to be hungry, but at the same time, we kind of need that leg more than the dog needs it.
In this analogy, SMART periods are like your legs — if you lose one, it’s difficult to get through the week — and the six meals are like the six periods of the day; teachers can build relationships with students in their regular classes, but we don’t really get to work on homework during our regular classes, so we need that SMART period time.
Fortunately for some of us, a few teachers have taken to condensing the Character Strong activities to about ten minutes so that we can get homework done. Not only do these small acts of defiance serve as testament to the ridiculousness of the Character Strong program, but they are also probably a better catalyst for teacher-student bonding than the program itself.
Admittedly, some of the new policies do seem necessary in light of recent student behavior, particularly the ramped-up enforcement of the no-cell-phone policy during SMART. Cell phones can undeniably be very distracting, and if we want a return to the freedom we enjoyed last year in SMART periods, we should at least be able to prove that we can make the most of the time given to us.
That said, cell phones can also be a valuable resource, particularly as a scheduling tool for students leading busy lives. So a small amount of flexibility from SMART teachers, in the form of granting students permission to use their cell phones on a case-by-case basis, would go a long way towards mending student-teacher relationships.
The new seating restrictions at lunch are also understandable. Last year, students eating outside left significant amounts of garbage and food waste around campus, and, according to the administration, $3,000 worth of reusable plates were lost.
That can’t be put on anyone but us, the students.
Our main complaint about the current policies is that there was little to no warning. We were taking our privileges to eat all around campus for granted, sure, but that was only because, until the beginning of this year, we thought they were. Some sort of warning to instill a shared understanding that lunch seating privileges could be taken away would surely have been worth a shot to solve the littering and loss of plates.
At the very least, it would send the message to students that we have some semblance of involvement in the policies that affect us.
According to Rock in a 2016 email introducing the annual student survey, “The value of [the survey responses] is how they change from year to year.” So let’s hope we see some change in the responses to the question about student involvement in the decision-making process, because we’re not content with it as is. Many of the recent policy changes at VHS directly contradict the changes we have asked for over recent years, and they exacerbate the problems that they attempt to solve.
These are not the changes we need at VHS.