Goats visiting campus. Food trucks serving poke and shaved ice. Field days with ice cream sundaes and relay races. These are all community-building initiatives that have been organized both by Prefect Council and individual clubs in recent years, and they all fall short in one way: they are sporadic, one-time events, not sustained solutions to the lack of rapport among students. Pressure at the school is intense, and competition can get in the way of building a strong school community. In order for the school to build a community where students have meaningful connections with each other, it is imperative that the strategy shifts from inconsistent and arbitrarily-placed events to frequent and consistent community-building initiatives.
Prefect Council holds the most power with respect to scheduling student events, and prefects should thus make a concerted effort to schedule activities outside of school spirit events. “Consistent” events such as Homecoming Formal and Fanatic Fest are consistent in that they happen every year, but true community-building events must take place multiple times throughout the school year. The school administration holds the ability to bolster community by establishing certain initiatives such as retreats and bonding time during school days.
In order to ensure students find smaller communities where they feel like they belong, the school should consider making it mandatory for Upper School students to become involved with at least one club or student association, with students attending it as often as they are able. According to Brandeis International Business School, clubs help students connect with new people and discover new strengths. Regularly attending club meetings can also provide a group of people that the students can lean on. However, many less-involved students do not join clubs, opting to study or engage in other activities such as socializing with friends, studying for tests or spending time on their devices.
Although Peer Support is one of the few consistent community initiatives the school offers that prides itself as a safe space for students, it is not accessible to a large majority of them. This is because it meets later than most after school activities, and ends after the late bus leaves. It is therefore more difficult for students who live far from school or take the bus to stay at Peer Support for its full duration. A successful community-building initiative must be accessible to all students, and in order for Peer Support to be more accessible, it should be at a time when all students on campus are present and have the option to participate.
Peer Support is not organized directly by Prefect Council, and the events that Prefect Council does spearhead, including food trucks and animals visiting campus, are sparsely placed throughout the year. The success of Prefect Council events is overshadowed by how rarely they occur. Prefect Council must take a note from clubs and schedule their events with more consistency.
There are many possibilities for consistent community-strengthening initiatives for the school to put in place, and a more tight-knit school community can be a reality within the foreseeable future. As far as the present moment, with the school’s emphasis on promoting mental health, one would think community-building would be further emphasized. Yet the current sporadic and little-publicized events often go under the radar of even the most diligent students.
