Prefect Council announced the reopening of on-campus activities over President Day weekend for upper school students via email Wednesday. During the fall, students had the opportunity to participate in similar activities, but due to rising COVID-19 cases, activities were shut down.
Students will undergo health screenings and temperature checks in order to ensure the safety of others and everyone will be required to wear school provided K95 masks. Social distancing protocols for students will be monitored by chaperones and teachers. Students will not be served food in order to avoid the removal of masks, unlike previously held social activities.
Prefect Yoshimi Kimura ’23 said she thinks the activities and games will be more fluid and that the Prefect Council’s goal is to keep the activities going consistently so that it feels more like on-campus school.
“We honestly don’t want to put too strict of like what exactly we are doing just because we want people to be able to talk to each other and connect without the whole ‘forced fun’ aspect,” Kimura said. “Just being able to see people for the first time in a long time makes anything fun.”
In addition to activities, spring sports practices and clubs have resumed on campus. Kimura said she thinks that this initial round of on-campus activities is just a starting point for more events at school during the following weeks.
“The reason why I am really excited about these [activities] is just like the morale of the school community in general,” Kimura said. “I think online it is really easy to to feel like you go to the school, but you are not really supported by the school or you don’t feel like you are apart of that community, and I think by having in person activities, as well as online activities, we start to rebuild the community that used to be there and that that kind of affirms the fact that we are here for you and we really want you guys to have fun and we want to do it in the safest way possible while giving you a chance to hang out with your friends and even meet new people, or anything that you haven’t gotten to do this prior year.”
