Assembly: Something Else to Complain About
The more things change, the more they stay the same. We’re officially back to mandatory, regulated assembly and opinion on campus is split on whether or not this is a good idea. Well, split between Principal Rawson and ... everyone else.
As many know already, the decision to reintroduce assembly checks was an administrative decision—and I have to respect that, if only as a power move. Nothing says harmonious student-teacher-administration cooperation than executive decision-making free of tiresome considerations such as “student input” and “making assembly release 15 minutes late.”
Now, of course, there is an argument about the democratic imperative to protest against the administration’s unilateral decision. But before we can begin passing moral judgement, we need to look at the pros and cons of assembly checking and determine whether or not it’s practical and justified.
There are certainly plenty of positives, we have to admit, with enforcing assembly. It’s true, for example, that assembly is a tradition, honored by most Exonians that came before us. It has historically been mandatory because the school believed it to be an important part of your curriculum. And it is part of your curriculum—the school spends a hefty sum of money getting assembly speakers, and for good reason: many of them have valuable lessons to teach, and they’ve come from far and wide to do precisely that. The job of Exeter, as a school, is to educate you, and this simple, 30-minute lecture period was designed to bring the school together and further your education. If you have the ability to take advantage of this education with very minimal effort, doesn’t it seem like you have a responsibility to do so? Shouldn’t you want to, if you care about your education? On top of all this, it’s a community event. It’s one of the only times that the entire school is supposedly invited to be in the same hall sharing time together, sometimes listening to a speaker and sometimes listening to their peers give heartfelt performances on stage.
But sometimes that’s the problem—that the whole school is invited. The fact is that the Assembly Hall simply does not fit all the students at our school. This makes it a time-consuming hassle to get out and, as I am 100 percent sure every Exeter student has heard, is a fire hazard. This Tuesday, for example, students were let out almost fifteen minutes after the intended time of 10:20, and this was a student event, not a speaker going over their allotted time. Not that there’s necessarily something wrong with a speaker talking for a couple of minutes more than usual, or a performance running a bit late; but now it’s far more likely that the school will either have to cut them off to enforce break––thereby ruining a paid event––or simply let assembly time eat into the next class every Tuesday and Friday. All because of the extra time it took to count the students as they came in.
All of this comes without mention of one of the biggest variables in this equation: the teachers. A lot of the complaints about assembly are, ironically, both coming from and being caused by faculty that have been required to perform checks against their will. Because the decision to enforce assembly was mostly Principal Rawson’s, many teachers didn’t have a say in whether they even wanted to go to assembly and check in a ton of annoying kids they don’t know. Because of miscommunications, and perhaps the novelty of the system, many had trouble finding their assigned checker. Some teachers arrived late to assembly, making it difficult for their students to check in, and others were not even in the right place. One student, whose identity will remain anonymous, claims to have gotten into a dispute with their checker because that teacher waited outside the assembly hall, where teachers used to be to enforce for random assembly checks, for his students. When the student left assembly hall through an alternate route, he only later realized he received a dickey for not meeting with his assigned assembly checker. The attempt to punish purported troublemakers only creates more annoyances for all.
You might have noticed that many of these worsened conditions for assembly affect the people who actually want to enjoy assemblies the most. The inevitable irritation on all sides that will result as tensions escalate between these groups of assembly lovers and assembly haters will just be one more needless disaster we can trace back to assembly checks.
Look, I’m not sure that any of these things necessarily spell the end of assembly checks. At the end of the day, a lot of them are more likely inconveniences than looming catastrophes (except the fire hazard problem, which is an actual, literal, looming catastrophe.
If I had to place a bet, I would say that after a while, people will settle in, meet their checkers, then silently harbor a mild resentment for the administration every Tuesday and Friday. True, some problems aren’t really going to go away. But people’s priorities will change, possibly for the better. Things will change until they stay the same.
Eventually, we’ll adapt. Maybe resistance to the new rules will wither away as we forget what it was like not to suffer, or maybe we’ll realize it’s just not that big of a deal. Maybe an enterprising student will make it his goal become Student Council president and end assembly checks forever or something like that. Until then, we’ll have something new to complain to Experience Exeter kids about.