Faculty Passes New Health Curriculum

Starting in fall 2019, all first-year Exonians will be required to take two terms of health class—one in the fall term and a second in either the winter or spring. Returning students will choose to take one term of health in either winter or spring term. The proposal passed with a 92-56 majority vote during faculty meeting on Monday, Jan. 28, with 13 abstentions.

Currently, preps, new lowers and seniors are the only students required to take health. While the intent of the revised health class requirement is to provide students with more support and improve overall student well-being at Exeter, many students questioned the necessity of this change. Lowers in Webster Hall even created a public petition to revoke the decision with the goal of collecting 500 signatures. Notably, many of the 300 signatures they currently have are anonymous or from individuals outside the current Exeter community who claim to empathize with student concerns. The legitimacy of these signatures is admittedly uncertain, as there is no way to ensure that every account belongs to an Exonian or that students are not creating multiple accounts.

Facebook accounts under the names Thomas, Finn and Joseph left short comments on the petition criticizing the policy. “This is stupid,” Joseph said. Thomas agreed, stating, “we are way too busy for this.” No adults have been involved in possible discussions about how this petition will be used and whether it can truly reverse the faculty vote.

Lower Ibrahim Ahmed, an author of the petition, expressed concerns about the lack of student input. “People started to talk about how they felt as though student input wasn’t really given and student input should have been given to faculty first,” Ahmed said.

Despite student concerns about a lack of communication between the Health and Human Development (HHD) department and the student body, Health Instructor and Department Chair Michelle Soucy highlighted that, academic departments including the HHD department do not consult students when making curricular changes. “If the other departments decided that they were going to change a requirement, they would not ask students for approval,” Soucy said.

More importantly, Soucy clarified that the health curriculum changes were made in the interest of the student body and in light of “high risk behaviors and the state of stress, anxiety and mental health in adolescents,” according to the new health curriculum pamphlet.

Soucy explained the initial factors involved in changing the health curriculum at Exeter, noting that the content of health classes will change as well. “One of the big pushes for us to change the curriculum in its existing format came from ALES, who made a couple of demands on the school about cultural competency work,” she said. “They asked the school to start talking about these things in health class.”

Soucy elaborated that the changes were also, in part, a result of conversations with the counselors in the College Counseling Office and recent data about student health. “The college counseling office process can be daunting for uppers, and the decisions around college choices can create stress,” Soucy said. “We want a place and time to help uppers manage stress in healthy ways.”

“The other reason we determined that uppers should have contact time with health teachers is because almost all of our data from the YRBS [Youth Risk Behavior Survey], the ASAP [Academy Student Assistance Program], our counselors in CAPS [Counseling and Psychological Services] and our health services (i.e. fatigue numbers) point to uppers as the highest stressed group on our campus,” Soucy said.

However, many students feel that adding one more commitment to uppers’ schedules would only contribute to heightened stress levels. “I feel that it would be challenging for students to have that extra commitment added into their schedules, especially during a year where you have to start to really focus on colleges while taking U.S. history,” lower Carlos Jones said.

Upper Pepper Pieroni agreed, noting that health classes may take away sleep-ins or frees for homework. “It’s so counterintuitive that a class that’s meant to help you increase your health takes away sleep,” he said.

Soucy hopes to provide clarity about the way health classes will be conducted and their purpose and effects. “Actually, students are getting back a term in prep and [new] lower year, and the senior class will stay the same. The changes are about the sequence for these students.” Soucy said. “The only addition is the one term class for uppers in winter or spring, and the courses for students entering the Academy.” Additionally, health classes that meet twice a week will no longer have homework, whereas senior health classes that meet once a week will have minimal homework.

Soucy explained how all new students, not just preps and new lowers, can benefit from fall term health classes, which help students acclimate to PEA. “New students do not know the information that returning students do, and they can benefit from an introduction to health matters, campus resources, study skills and time management skills that were learned in fall HHD classes by those who are already at our school.”

While Ahmed understands that students should learn about issues relevant to their age group, he believes that such topics were covered adequately in prep year. “I think they already set a good foundation in terms of educating us about the things that we’ll encounter as we mature,” he said.

In contrast, upper Addie Graham supports the health curriculum change despite the time inconvenience. “I like how new uppers and seniors would be getting an introductory health course as well, since that is currently not an option,” Graham said.

Additionally, Graham, a member of the LGBTQ+ community, feels that the current program “brushes over or completely ignores certain topics such as LGBTQ+ identities which is a very important topic to learn about, especially as teenagers.”

While prep Coco Lipe agrees that the curriculum should be improved, she believes the number of meetings should not change. “Right now, the health classes aren’t very efficient in what they teach. They spend a long time on some topics and barely cover others,” she said.

Lipe concluded that only the prep health classes need to be revised. “A better solution would be to revamp the prep health curriculum and fix it without making people take more health,” she said.