Academy Plans Assigned Seating for Assembly
In response to the recurring issue of poor assembly attendance, Assembly Committee Chair Alex Myers and Principal Bill Rawson have decided to institute assigned sections for assembly, beginning next Tuesday, April 23.
For the past two terms, a noticeable portion of the Assembly Hall has remained empty despite several noteworthy speakers and multiple reminders from faculty. This drop in attendance has coincided with a temporary break in attendance checks.
The assigned sections plan—similar to a version implemented in the 70’s and 90’s— allows the school to more consistently keep track of each individual student’s assembly attendance. More importantly, the administration hopes that this change will compel all students to attend assembly.
According to Myers, “Seating will be distributed by grade. Within each grade, students are assigned [alphabetically] to numbered sections within the Hall.” Students must check in with their assigned faculty member at the beginning of assembly, and they can only sit within their designated sections.
Over the past few days, unpublished assembly courses have been added to students’ Canvas pages. “I clicked on ‘All Courses,’ and that’s where I found it,” lower William Vietor said. “I was dumbfounded. I didn’t expect that the administration really felt it necessary to check the entire school during assembly.”
While the policy is primarily targeted towards students, faculty attendance will also be more closely regulated by it. “I think it’s fair to say that faculty attendance varies and isn’t always perfect,” Myers said. The policy was not subject to a faculty vote and Dean of Faculty Ellen Wolff was not available to comment.
Faculty members will sacrifice potential meeting times with this regulated attendance and added responsibility. Some departments have made efforts to coordinate assembly duty on a departmental level. “For the Department of Modern Languages, we’ve tried to put Instructors of the same language in the same day,” Instructor in Modern Languages Ming Fontaine said. “This allows us to have meetings during the assembly block the day we are not required to attend. Then, we can discuss our progress in the term and the curriculum when we do not attend assembly.”
Although the policy had not been announced, a rumor spread amongst the student body on Tuesday, April 9, that a school-wide check would occur. Consequently, students flocked to assembly, eager to avoid a dickey. At the end of speaker Robert Lim’s address, when Myers only announced, “Senior Class,” those who came quickly realized that the rumor was unfounded.
Regular attendees noted the different composition of the audience and its effect on the assembly experience. “It changed the atmosphere of assembly,” prep Adaeze Barrah said. “I feel that it’s mostly because everyone was going there in fear of getting dickeys, rather than actually feeling like they actually wanted to go.”
Certain students expressed their frustration with the rumors. “I’ve dicked one or two assemblies. Either the topic doesn’t interest me or I have work to do. Sometimes, assemblies just interest no one,” lower Valentina Rogers said. “On Tuesday, I heard from multiple people that there was going to be a check and I decided to go just in case. I was a little upset that it didn’t happen.”
Some frustrations translated into concerns about the administration’s proposal. “That could potentially cause a fire hazard,” upper Kevin Xu said, questioning whether the Assembly Hall could fit the entire student body at its current size. “The student body has been growing, but the Assembly Hall has not.”
However, Director of Campus Safety Services and Risk Management Paul Gravel clarified that the Assembly Hall can host more than the limit set by the fire code because Campus Safety monitors are trained in crowd control and attendees are familiar with the room layout. “The risk is always present, [but] training, along with fire notification devices and fire drills, helps mitigate that risk,” he said.
Others felt that the change does not address the root of underwhelming attendance. “Personally, there have been life-changing assemblies that I’ve been to. There are some that aren’t,” lower Senai Robinson said. “These assemblies don’t make me dive further into Exeter. [They] make me retract from Exeter. If we’re trying to maximize attendance, I think the content needs to be more thoroughly thought out and it needs to have a serious impact.”
Some in the student body also felt that assembly speakers lack diversity. “We’ve had [many] liberal assembly speakers and no conservative ones,” lower Sarah Kennedy said. “I really hope that we will have at least one conservative speaker this year.”
A few students went as far as saying that this policy represented a disconnect between faculty and student priorities. “I don’t think that assembly is that important,” upper Kileidria Aguilar said. “I think we should be learning new perspectives and new stories, but, we should also be conscious of people’s time at Exeter.”
English Instructor Courtney Marshall expressed her thoughts that the new policy was in order to respect the speakers brought to campus. “When we do invite people to the campus, they don’t want a half-empty audience. They’ve come all this way,” she said. “I hope that students, over time, go from thinking assembly is a chore that they have to go to something that they want to go to.”
Upper Cameron Frary concluded that assembly was a learning opportunity. “It makes me sad that a sizable portion of our student body has to be forced to go to assembly … Though students may bemoan attendance, assembly remains an essential part of life at the Academy. From now on, it will also be a more regulated one.”