Campus Enjoys Winter Activity Offerings
By Beeke Fock, Lauren Kim, Selim Kim, and Emilia Kniestedt
After two weeks of quarantine and online classes, the Academy has finally begun to offer in-person student activities on campus again. Taking advantage of the chilly weather, many of these activities are winter-themed, including recreational skating nights and indoor game nights in the Goel Theater and Dance Center. These activities were welcomed by students and faculty alike, especially after social-distancing guidelines were relaxed.
On February 8, Director of Student Activities Joanne Lembo announced that “clubs wishing to meet in person no longer need specific permission to do so.” Clubs may only meet during the same assigned time slot as those in the fall term, and all participants must be masked and stay socially distanced (three feet apart). If a club is meeting outside of the Academy Center, GOEL, or the Gym Complex, where there is no building monitor, an adviser or other PEA adult must be present. Permission to attend in-person events may be granted by the Student Activities Office.
Some of the on-campus activities offered include “Games in Goel,” “Film in the Forum,” “Paint in Grainger,” and recreational skating. The indoor activities are mainly on weekends, however recreational ice-skating has been opened on other weekday afternoons as well. Along with these activities, Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) clubs hosted a skating night on Jan. 21. However, COVID-19 restrictions remain in place on-campus, causing the highly-anticipated Winter Formal dance to be canceled, announced Jan. 22 via email by Assistant Director of Student Activities Kelly McGahie.
Students have been enjoying the mix of both indoor and outdoor activities. Lower Asena Gursel said, “Games in Goel are my favorite activity because you just get to slow down and spend time with your friends. It feels like a very normal environment, which we are not getting much of right now.”
Lower Solei Silva-Carin agreed, saying, “I usually attend the activities that you can do more with your friends, such as the Games in Goel or Paint in Grainger, but I also don’t go to many just because there’s either a lot of people there or I just want to do something else.”
Senior and Korean Society co-head Allison Kim reflected on the OMA skating event, which Korean Society helped organize: “Skating was just something that the co-heads thought would be fun. Since Korean Society meets only during dinner time, it’s been pretty hard for us to meet in-person during COVID-19 restrictions. So we thought that would be a fun way for our club members to actually see each other in-person.”
In spite of outdoor activities, many students have found that the freezing January weather keeps them socializing indoors. “I prefer to hang out with my friends in EPAC instead. I also wish they brought back indoor skating because it gets so chilly outside, or the D^2 coffee they had at the beginning of the year,” lower Avery Selig said.
Students have had mixed reactions in response to the cancellation of Winter Formal. “I came in last year as a prep and I haven’t attended any dances at all in my time here. It’s also frustrating that other events are being prioritized over it. It’s just sad that after this year, I’m going to be an upper without having really been to a high school dance,” Gursel said.
Lower William Simpson empathized with students who were devastated by the Winter Formal news. “My immediate feeling on the Winter Formal cancellation is that I’m mildly disappointed. It wasn’t a huge hit to me, but I definitely feel for the people who were looking for a fun social night, an excuse to dress up, and have some sort of high school normalcy,” he said.
Some students expected the cancellation. “I kind of already knew that this would happen, so I wasn’t really disappointed…I was excited because all of my experience here at Exeter has surrounded COVID, but…I just hope to see more activities where students can really just have fun and let loose because I feel like a lot of the time, Exeter can be very stressful with the lack of range of activities or capacity limits,” Silvia-Carin said.
Though the possibility of a formal dance in the spring cannot be confirmed, McGahie is hopeful that other opportunities for a dance may arise. “If the pandemic response team feels like we’re at a place where we can gather, and it may end up needing to be outside, the Recreation Committee, the Executive Board and I have committed to working together. We will do what we can,” McGahie said. “I’m open to whatever kind of dance it would be, but it has to be something that takes into account what the COVID conditions are at that moment. We don’t want to have a dance where students cannot be near each other, and we don’t want to throw caution to the wind when it’s not justified and inadvertently spread COVID.”
Despite the cancellation of the Winter Formal, students remain hopeful for more in-person activities later in the year. “There are events with my clubs that I’m hoping will still go through like the Exeter Association of Rock assembly for the end of winter term. And, there’s this GSA (Gender and Sexuality Alliance) dinner that we do that we’re hoping to have in spring term. Then, obviously since I’m a senior, I really hope prom will come too,” Kim said.
McGahie hopes to resume more in-person activities soon as pandemic guidelines loosen, with students and faculty apprehensive to begin socializing again. “My thoughts are that as soon as we can do it safely, we need to do it…I’m hopeful that while we’re sort of in this newish stage of the pandemic…we’re able to kind of create more spaces. I just think that the best remedy for being stressed out and depressed and anxious and overwhelmed is to hang out with your friends…it makes Exeter a much more pleasant place to be,” McGahie said.
