Athenian Community Meetings in Need of Change
Community Meetings are weekly events on the Athenian campus. They are a tradition intended to share information and bring the community together. Usually, the meetings consist of a speaker discussing a subject the school believes is relevant to the time and community, followed by general announcements about more day-to-day events.
The process of community meetings only gets increasingly tedious for the community after each one; they all seem to follow the same repetitive formula as all the others. Community meetings aren’t without merit, though; sometimes, they can introduce interesting ideas to the upper school or provide excellent entertainment value.
Despite this, the sheer number of community meetings seems unnecessary to the purpose they intend to fulfill. But how can Athenian uproot such an extensive tradition of the upper school? How will Athenian do weekly announcements? The complete elimination of community meetings would be somewhat of an overreach and may not be necessary, but community meetings should be subject to major changes.
The ironic thing about community meetings is the community has little to no impact on the subject and speaker of the community meeting. Despite community meetings being intended for the community as a whole, students have no idea what will happen at each community meeting and no say on the speaker or topic of the meeting. Unlike town halls, these meetings aren’t catered to the students themselves but catered to what the faculty thinks is relevant to us.
This year’s community meetings especially have contained information that could easily be transferred by email and are frequently filled with speeches that could be optional for people who think it’s relevant to them, or people who are still excited by the idea of a weekly community meeting. This way, students are more free to do work and still have the option of a community meeting.
Currently, the way we do community meetings will never be enjoyable for every student. At the same time, I’m sure every community meeting has been worth it for at least one person; nevertheless, if community meetings aren’t changed, the entire upper school doesn’t need to attend a community meeting every week. After a while, every community meeting starts to blur together, each one making them collectively more dull. By making them optional or more scarce and using emails to announce important information, we can combat the dullness of the meetings, and they will stay fresh whenever you choose to attend one.
Despite the logistical challenges, it would be worth it for faculty as they spend hours planning community meetings without knowing what the students genuinely want. There is no natural way for students to give feedback on community meetings or even input ideas for topics. Making the meetings optional or less common, and getting more student input during the planning process, could help make the meetings much more enjoyable.
