Efficacy of Core Values Projects
By: Calista Lee
The Academy has implemented Core Values Projects in place of last year’s anti-racism block. It serves as “an invitation for further discussion,” in the words of Dean Weatherspoon. The students who have started their own Core Values Project guide others through Harkness discussions, readings, activities, and so on.
The anti-racism workshops, in my experience, really weren’t that worthwhile. The groups were so large that you didn’t have to participate, which led to students’ general lack of interest in the conversations. Obviously, lots of its effectiveness was lost due to Zoom and being online.
Last year, I would take part in my anti-racism class by opening the Zoom and promptly falling asleep. On other occasions, my friends and I would leave the computer on while doing completely different things together. The Academy didn’t make a great effort to get students invested in the discussions, and I literally don’t remember a single thing we talked about.
The problem wasn’t the lessons themselves– I have a couple friends who did actively participate in the discussion and enjoyed it — it was just Zoom. If students were invested, the anti-racism classes would have probably worked out fine. Now that we’re in person, smaller, more hands-on groups that aren’t on Zoom would lead to better conversation about the issues at hand. If we could have done the classes in person, I’m sure they would have turned out great. But instead, they have been replaced by CVPs.
Here's my issue with them: Core Value Projects are inconsistent. As opposed to last year’s anti-racism block that they replaced, CVPs are not always well constructed. The old anti-racism classes were more formal, led and instructed by teachers. Each group would educate their group of students in a similar fashion, and even though the main topics may have been different, they all centered around the idea of anti-racism.
When students direct their own classes, their range of ability greatly varies. There’s a big gap in the productivity of CVPs because of this. Some may have trouble leading such a large group of students, while others are doing very well. The subject matter of the projects are also incomparable in importance, having the range of Rest is Resistance, a completely asynchronous napping CVP, to How to Support Students of Color 101, which instructs white teachers through interactions with students of color. I think it’s pretty clear which project is more informative. I’m not trying to say that any CVP is bad or worthless, there are simply different priorities in each one. Even though some of the projects do spark change in the Academy, I feel like many students think that CVPs are not as helpful as the anti-racism classes were.
The projects are successful in some departments, however. They support the establishment of cross-grade connections, which can be hard for some people to engage in. But from what I’ve gathered from talking to various dormmates, this effect simply isn’t that strong. Some of my friends don’t even know the names of the people in their CVPs. These kinds of relationships can easily be found from sports, dorm activities, and clubs, which are more readily available for students to participate in.
Last term, my CVP was pretty well organized, but it also didn’t take attendance so I just didn’t go. There were roughly as many people in it as my anti-racism class, but that eventually whittled down to about half the original size as people stopped coming. Perhaps my group was just bigger than the others, or the circumstances led to a lack of productivity. Either way, it remains as one example of the flawed system. Although I don’t think large groups necessarily help productivity, the decrease of students’ attendance at projects meant there was a pretty significant amount of students simply not participating in the CVPs. Again, the same problem with the anti-racism classes is apparent here. Larger groups lead to less people being actively interested in discussion. It’s a similar mindset to Zoom classes in general. Somebody else will probably put in the effort and you’re not the center of attention, so it doesn’t matter. In the future, smaller groups of these social change classes would be effective, but for now, the larger groups are taking away time from other important topics.
The general consensus seems to be that the block should just be used as a break. None of the people I’ve talked to want extra classes between classes, they just want some time out. Students are overworked already in the Exeter environment, and even just an extra 50-minutes could make or break their weekly experience. I honestly haven’t talked to anyone who hasn’t just wanted a break from classes during this period.
This block has the potential to be used to educate and bring together students if used in the right way. The Academy needs to focus on organizing the CVP groups in a productive and effective manner. We could try cutting up groups into smaller ones that meet across the week, or maybe even going back to the Anti-Racism classes from the past and adding similar changes. But for now, the question remains: is this block really worth our time?
