Assembly Selection Process Studied
On Tuesdays and Fridays of each week, students are required to attend a 20 minute-long community gathering in the Assembly Hall for various purposes. From presentations and speeches to performances and pep rallies, assemblies provide unique opportunities for the student body.
But students often wonder: how are these speakers chosen and contacted?
Kathleen Brownback, religion instructor and head of the assembly committee, explained the initiation of the process.
Most of the time, speakers are recommended by academic departments, teachers, the principal and even students. After receiving the requests, the assembly committee, with Brownback as the main contact for speakers from outside the campus, discusses these options and makes the final decision on who the assembly speakers will be for the upcoming weeks.
“We always look for people who are knowledgeable and experienced speakers on significant topics, but you never know for sure who will be good—and probably no one’s list of top five assemblies would match anyone else’s.”
The assembly committee is comprised of both faculty and students who hold lunch meetings to discuss these suggestions and finalize whether or not they should be granted.
This year, the committee is composed of lower Jena Yun, upper Jun Park, seniors Emily Lemmerman and Benjamin Cohen, Director of Donor Relations Bonnie Weeks, Assembly Program Administrative Assistant Mary Frances Dagostino, religion instructor Thomas Simpson, English instructors Rebecca Moore and Patricia Burke Hickey and Dean of Multicultural Affairs Rosanna Salcedo.
Yun noted that with so many great speakers recommended, it is hard to accept all of these requests. She believes that this selective choosing is one of the reasons why this committee exists in the first place.
“The only difficulty I have seen in this process, as well as what I’ve heard from other students, is that not every idea can be approved because the slots fill up quickly and the number is bound,” Yun said. “I feel that this is part of the reason a committee has been created, at least in the inclusion of students this year. The faculty also involved in the committee are interested to hear the students’ feedback from previous assemblies and what Exonians would consider a valuable assembly.”
After taking into account student and faculty opinion on previous speakers and surveying the ideas that each speaker will be presenting, the committee looks for particular traits in the speakers to come.
However, the diversity of the Academy’s community brings a wide range of interests, which makes it almost impossible to satiate the entire community’s likings.
“We always look for people who are knowledgeable and experienced speakers on significant topics, but you never know for sure who will be good—and probably no one’s list of top five assemblies would match anyone else’s,” Brownback said.
This year, the assembly committee looked to alter the conventional assembly. They placed more emphasis on “first-person experiential” assemblies, such as the Active Minds or the Fight Club assemblies. In addition, the committee, for the first time in the history of assemblies, decided to hold an interactive, whole school discussion, led by Cohen and Lemmerman.
“We also had the first all-school meetings in assembly that we’ve ever had—no one knew for sure that these would turn out well, but they did,” Brownback said. “There have always been student-run assemblies like Halloween and the pep rallies, but these were more an experiment in collective discussion, following Mr. Weatherspoon’s open assembly on goodness.”
With this change of style for this year’s assembly speakers, members of the Exeter community believe that no matter the style of the assembly, interactive or non-interactive, experiential or non-experiential, the students and faculty should be able leave the hall excited and interested about the speaker’s words each Tuesday and Friday.
History instructor William Jordan believes that the main goal of assembly should be to raise the interest level of students about things outside the “Exeter bubble” such as “politics, the workings of government and international affairs,” as high school is a time for students to grow aware of the outside world.
“If we as a school don’t facilitate that process of expanding our students’ awareness, then I think we’ve really failed in our job of creating informed and engaged citizens, which I think should be at least equal to the school’s goal of preparing our students for college,” he said.
Lower Alejandro Arango shared Jordan’s view, and added that in addition to the knowledge of the outer world, assemblies should inspire students as well. Arango singled out an assembly last year led by Dr. Raul Ruiz, a congressman from California.
Ruiz received a standing ovation by the end of his speech, and a large number of students, if not all truly, found the 20 minutes spent in assembly hall worthwhile.
“It was incredibly inspiring,” Arango said. “That’s what we need as Exonians. Speeches that inspire us. Yes, we need speeches that inform us as well. Overall though, we need speeches that we as young people can relate to, not become bored from.”
Assemblies such as Ruiz’s, exciting and relatable, are ones that most Exonians hope to observe in the future.
Prep Arielle Lui also singled out an assembly, led by the group, “Sex Signals.” She explained that because it was a topic that teenagers and college students should be educated about, students were more engaged and remained focused throughout the 20 minutes.
“It was a good assembly because it was funny and entertaining but also informative. I also like how the speakers were young adults instead of older people,” she said. “Teens tend to listen to young adults such as Brandon more than older people.”
Nevertheless, assembly can’t please everyone. From the first step, selecting speakers from the recommendations and applications, to the final, the execution of that assembly, there are always issues that make pleasing everyone almost an impossibility.
However, the assembly committee and the Exeter community members who recommend speakers work their hardest to inform and inspire the community with the twice per week, twenty minute block.
“It’s not an easy audience—Mr. Clarke, the former art gallery director, once referred to us as ‘the toughest gig on the Eastern seaboard,’” Brownback said. “But we have had a lot of great speakers over the years, well-received.”