Assemblies: You Hate ‘Em or You Love ‘Em
By ADELLE PITTS ‘27, MELIA THIBAULT ‘27, and THEA VAUGHAN ‘27
Assemblies. You love them, you hate them, and you fall asleep during them. Twice a week, the whole student body and faculty members gather in the Assembly Hall to listen to the school’s speaker of choice talk about their subject of choice for anywhere between twenty-five to to forty minutes—and you never know how long it will be when you first walk in. We are told assemblies are important to our Exeter education, but are they essential, or can we do without them? The answer is a little bit more complicated than that. The thing about assemblies is that the good ones are amazing. They inspire you, they stick with you, they motivate you. They also occur about once a term. The majority of assemblies, though? You leave them wishing that you could have spent the time catching up on homework instead.
So, what makes an assembly good? What sets someone like Exeter alumna, author, and Beijing finishing school founder Sarah Jane Ho apart from someone like Harvard-educated American novelist and professor Dara Horn? One major factor is relatability. Assemblies are often most effective if they speak to experiences we have all encountered. One example of this is Ho’s reflection on the nervous feeling she got every time she walked into the Elm Street dining hall. Almost every Exonian has experienced this at least once in their life, so when someone talks about it, we listen and clap in approval. The speaker doesn’t even have to be an Exonian to be relatable, but just having that relatability factor makes people listen just a bit more closely and makes the assembly feel worthwhile.
But a good assembly is not just about being relatable; almost every Exeter alumni speaker would be interesting if it was. There is also an aspect of speaking style involved. For Exonians to take note, the speaker needs to be engaging instead of solely speaking at us. When speakers like Dara Horn attempt to direct us how to think without letting informed ideas speak for themselves, it can be jarring. When speakers like MK Kim don’t encourage as much student engagement during their speeches as possible, it is far too easy for audience members to feel left out. Although napping is not the purpose of the assembly block; sometimes, it simply cannot be helped.
This leads us back to our earlier question: are assemblies beneficial for students’ learning? And are they important enough to be mandatory? When they are not guaranteed to be relatable and engaging, as they often are not, why should we be forced to listen to them when we could be doing something more beneficial like catching up on homework instead? However, if assemblies are optional, will we miss the few that inspire us? Perhaps the answer is to find a middle ground. The current situation, requiring students to attend an assembly twice a week, every week, cheapens the value of the experience. Additionally, the frequent nature of assembly often results in many speakers feeling like placeholders, just so they can fill up students’ time during the assembly block.
What if Exeter held assemblies only once a week instead? If speakers only came weekly or even bimonthly, we could end up with a compromise that considers the desires of everyone. On the one hand, students will have more time to sleep, study, or do homework; on the other hand, it also allows us to get more out of existing assemblies. It is easier on the administration, as they don’t have to find placeholder speakers, leaving them withmore time searching for those high quality, impactful speakers.
Ultimately, we will probably never reach a full consensus between what we want and what the administration wants. Right now, we can all see that something is not working. Assemblies have the potential to be interesting, educational, and impactful. However, their repetitive nature defeats that purpose and, transforming assembly into something boring, monotonous, and occasionally sleep-inducing. For now, we’ll have to sift through the time stealers to find the charismatic, the influential, and the impactful speakers worth listening to.
