Student Council Thanks Staff With Concert

From The Exeteras and PEADs to Imani, Precision and Outkast, students gave a performative "thanks" to staff members during Monday’s Faculty Meeting block. The event, hosted by Student Council, took place in Powell Hall in the Music Building.

StuCo President Max Freedman said the importance and impact of staff in the Academy community is a sometimes overlooked component of campus. "Think for a minute of what would happen if the staff went on strike for a day. The school would grind to a halt," Freedman said. "The staff is a group of essential members of the Academy community without whom none of what we take for granted would exist."

StuCo leaders planned the event because they felt that the staff was underappreciated and that the staff deserved more thanks from the student body. "All too often, the jobs staff performs are thankless," Freedman said. "We feel it is important because it is genuinely the right thing to do - to thank someone who works hard on our behalf. As a school, we need to do a better job of making the staff feel they are part of the community."

Secretary-elect Benj Cohen agreed. "Without the staff, the bathrooms wouldn’t work, the buildings would not be clean, and we would not be able to live our lives the way we do now," Cohen said.

"Students and faculty interact all the time; you go to classes, and they live in your dorms. But really, we don’t interact too much with the staff, but they're the reason the school functions," Cohen said. "As representatives of the student body, we wanted to let the staff know that we feel grateful for what the staff does."

Among the StuCo members who planned the concert were Freedman and Cohen, Secretary and President-elect Alice Ju, Vice President-elect Emily Lemmerman, along with Principal Tom Hassan, Director of Dining Services Ward Ganger and Director of Facilities Management Roger Wakeman.

Lemmerman agreed on the importance of acknowledging the staff’s work. "It's important to thank the staff because they do so much; they work largely behind the scenes on campus, and many students are largely unaware of what they do, and often don't acknowledge staff," she said.

Council chose to hold a concert because staff members are often working during usual concert hours, according to Cohen. "Staff never gets to interact with the students. For example, they never get to see the concert, even if they set up for the concert," Cohen said. "So this event was a way to connect between staff and the students. "

Staff appreciated the students’ efforts to recognize the staff’s work by displaying their talents. "It was nice to see students in a different light. I thought it was a great recognition and they seemed very happy to be able to do something for us for a change. The whole thing was very genuine," Emily Carroll, a staff worker in the Post Office, said. "It was nice to see them doing something that they like to do, and they seemed like they were having fun."

Kathy Stebbins, who works at Grill, agreed. "It gave me an opportunity to see some of the things students do that I would never get to see otherwise," Stebbins said. "I appreciated the students’ making an effort to recognize our work."

Freedman also noticed the positive reception. "I personally received emails from many of the staff members present who were quite enthusiastic," Freedman said. "Many of them commented on how nice it was to see student performances especially given how hard they work behind the scenes to make the events we usually put on possible."

Given the enthusiastic response from staff, Council hopes to have more events to recognize the work of staff. "We'll definitely do this again next year, and we are considering a mural to be put up on campus permanently to express our thoughts, and are looking for ideas for that right now," Lemmerman said. "Every other year, there will also be a dinner for dining hall services put on by the ESSO club Pass It Forward."

Ju also wants to continue the event annually. "I hope that this becomes a yearly event," she said. "I also urge my classmates to go out of their way to thank the staff whenever possible."