In an email sent to the student body April 28, the school announced the creation of The Quad, a platform designed as an online hub for students to access and sign up for upper school events.
Prefect Council, along with HW Venture and The Quad developer Aariz Irfan ’23, created the website as a way to combat the lack of social interaction during the quarantine period, according to the email. Additionally, the email stated that the platform is intended to simulate the quad on the upper school campus.
Quad Team leader and HW Venture head Amaan Irfan ’21 said that HW Venture proposed the platform after recognizing the lack of community due to social isolation.
“At the start of quarantine, the HW Venture team realized that the community would be lacking bonding, so we first came up with many ideas and asked the Prefect Council to perform them,” Irfan said. “We realized that the master Google Doc wasn’t very interactive, so we came up with the idea for an online platform instead. We contacted my brother for the development and Prefect Council for help in coordinating the website.”
Head Prefect Michael Lehrhoff ’20 said that Prefect Council’s involvement was based on its activity in online school events.
“Knowing how passionate students and faculty are about their extracurricular interests, we all realized that, though we cannot see each other on campus, we can still engage with our friends and peers through online media,” Lehrhoff said. “Given the past success of our spring break online extracurricular classes, activities and events, there was no doubt that we wanted to create a more robust, dynamic website for students and faculty to stay connected.”
The website allows for students to sign up for school activities, receive notifications about school events and indicate interest in upcoming activities in the school community. Lehrhoff said he hopes to grow the platform in the future and revise the website based on students’ needs.
“In the future, we plan to expand the number of events and types of events, everything from round table discussions to teacher lectures to game nights,” Leheroff said. “After launch, we will be reaching out to ask for feedback on events, as well as the platform’s design, so that The Quad best serves the needs of our community.”
