Rawson Pushes for Stricter Attendance at Future Assemblies

Dean of Student Health and Wellness Gordon Coole steps onto the Assembly Hall Stage, and students wait in anticipation as he begins, “Assembly check for…” Students who are clear rush out, while others head to the marble steps of the Academy Building to check in with faculty.

According to Dean of Student Health and Wellness Gordon Coole, the school will conduct an assembly attendance check at almost every assembly for the coming year at the direction of Interim Principal William Rawson.

According to Coole, faculty and administrators have grown increasingly dismayed by students choosing to miss assembly. The Dean of Students’ Office is currently working with Campus Safety and the Information Technology Governance Committee to develop an electronic method of taking assembly attendance for the entire student body. Students would swipe into the Assembly Hall using their Lion Cards. “This particularly is being driven by safety concerns and risk management,” Coole said.

Coole hopes to implement this online system “as soon as possible” and believes that a new system will not detract from discussions following the assembly as in-person checks currently do. “You want to leave a wonderful assembly in a manner that allows people to continue talking about the assembly topic,” Coole said. “I’m an interference. People are just thinking ‘Who is Dean Coole going to check today?’”

Until the school develops an electronic system, however, Coole will continue to conduct in-person assembly checks.

Despite pressure to attend assembly, students expressed concerns about the risks associated with a full Assembly Hall. Lower Philip Horrigan suggested that an Assembly Hall filled up to or over maximum capacity could be a fire hazard, saying “the problem is that there’s going to be over a thousand kids in the Assembly Hall every single Tuesday and Friday, and that’s just ridiculous.”

In fact, a plaque located in the room reads that the Exeter Fire Department-mandated capacity for the Assembly Hall is 1076 people—less than enough to accomodate the 1094-member student body of the school, let alone faculty as well.

Director of Campus Safety Services and Risk Management Paul Gravel, however, assured the community the school has discussed fire safety precautions at length with the Exeter Fire Department. “We are not breaking Fire Code when full assembly is in session,” he said. “All members of Campus Safety are certified Crowd Managers [...] and are in attendance during Assembly. So we can exceed posted occupancy.”

While History Instructor Michael Golay understands the value of assemblies, he sympathized with students’ occasional need to repurpose the 50-minute assembly block. “I used to allow my advisees who were having a particularly difficult time or had a test coming up [...] sit out an assembly in my classroom occasionally. I don’t feel I can do that any longer with the new system,” he said. However, Golay believed that periodic, random assembly checks were beneficial. “I suppose in a perfect world, I would wish that students who have a particularly heavy day could have a little discretion about whether they could sit out a particular assembly.”

History Instructor Betty Luther-Hillman suggested that the decline in assembly attendance points to “a larger problem with the culture” at the Academy. “The school says we care about certain things—attending assembly, learning about the world and about our peers—but sometimes the things we officially reward can conflict with the other things we value. If a student has to choose between attending assembly and finishing their homework, I can totally understand why they would choose the latter,” she said.

Senior Ruby Bagwyn believes that most Exonians only skip assemblies under extenuating circumstances. “A lot of people try to use that time to do homework. [Missing assembly] gives me more free time to get work done and it’s a comfort to know that I have that time if I need it,” she said.

Others, however, are not convinced by the claim that Exonians only skip assembly for extenuating circumstances. “I hear too many stories of students with double sleep-ins before assembly who choose to skip and I see far too many empty seats to give these excuses [about heavy workload] much credence,” Science Instructor Townley Chisholm said. “Students should plan their days around assemblies just as they do around their classes,” he said.

Coach Olutoyin Augustus-Ikwuakor holds a similar opinion and believes that Exonians should prioritize assembly for its importance as “the only official and consistent time when we gather all students together to hear one message. It is a space for inclusion.”

Despite the vast array of speakers, many students contest Augustus-Ikwuakor’s claim. Upper Francisco Silva has not always found assembly to be a valuable learning experience. “There have been some assemblies where we leave and we’re just wondering what the point of that was,” Silva said. “The problem isn’t that the school isn’t cracking down on assembly checks—it’s that the school isn’t inviting more inspiring speakers.”

Senior Priscilla Ehrgood agreed. “I think [the level of engagement] really depends on the speaker. There are some assemblies that everyone finds engaging and others that are only interesting for an exclusive group of people,” she said.

English Instructor and new Chair of the Assembly Committee Alex Myers is aware of such sentiments and noted that the Assembly Committee is open to student feedback about how to make assemblies more engaging. “I do hear people sometimes say ‘It’s a waste of time. I don’t enjoy it. I don’t learn anything.’ To those people, I would say ‘let me know what wasn’t good and let me know what you would like to hear,’” he said. “I want the program to be good and I will take the time and the energy and the effort to make it good.”