11 minute read
Opinion Pieces
The Day Student Experience at Hebron Academy
By Sylvie Gill ’26
Advertisement
In many ways, being a day student at Hebron Academy is a lot different from being a boarding student. There are both challenges and benefits.
I am a day student and know it can be quite hard sometimes to juggle school and home life. I interviewed Louisa, also a day student, who mentioned it can be a challenge dealing with the homework load after getting home late from dance practice. This is particularly true when assignments are posted late, and there were earlier opportunities in the day to do homework. Brennan Pike said he often feels out of the loop because, unlike boarders who live at Hebron, he commutes to school everyday and sometimes feels like he misses out. Belle Beauchesne told me: “It can be hard to make connections with boarding students when not on campus all the time and when you cannot attend weekend activities.” It can also be hard for day students to get help with schoolwork, since teachers are only available for extra help during the school day or to those who are on campus after the academic day is over. Last minute or surprise events can also be hard for day students. Brennan Pike said, “Since day students can not just go back to their dorms to get a change of clothes or the appropriate shoes, we often miss out.” Also, day Students often have previous commitments outside of school which cannot be missed. An example of this was Mountain Day, which was not officially announced until late at night when some day students were already asleep. Getting to school the next day without your snow gear and skis to find out the whole school is headed to the mountain, just doesn’t sit well.
Most of the people I interviewed said there are many benefits to being a day student as well. Belle Beauchesne says she likes being able to go home and see her family everyday. Brennan Pike said he likes being a day Student because he can do what he wants in his free time and is able to have his own rules. When you are a day student, you can get a paying job during the school year. Also, getting your driver's license is a lot easier. Though it can be hard to get help from teachers, day student’s parents may be available to help you. Belle Beauchesne said, “The teachers at Hebron are very understanding, willing to help in any way they can and recognize that day students' schedules are often very busy.” All the day students I interviewed said that even though they get home between, 4:00pm - 9:00pm, they all are still able to get about eight hours of sleep a night.
There are many challenges and advantages of being either a day student or a boarding student at Hebron Academy. While there is room for improvement to better balance the schedule and curriculum to benefit both day students and boarders, most of the day students I interviewed are relatively happy with their situation at Hebron Academy.
(Above) Digital Portrait of Sierra Leone: by Kali Salazar Perez (Below) Digital Portrait of Sierra Leone 1929: by Nora Tobey
Girls Sports
By Julia Gregory ’22
“Girls' sports are so boring,” “You play like a girl,” “I’m not going, it’ll be lame.”
I’ve heard these comments constantly throughout all of high school. My freshman year, I was surprised that no one showed up to support, but by my senior year, I’m now surprised if people show up at all. That reality is sad, disheartening, and does not encourage younger girls to play sports. Having to constantly hear how girls' sports are inferior, and how boys are always better is quite simply ludicrous.
Society has created these absurd gender norms that you conform to as soon as you’re born. We associate color with genders, so instantly we’re put into a box. Blue or pink. Girls are expected to do either dance, gymnastics, or something more “feminine,” while boys are expected to be playing “masculine” sports. Society treats girls like these fragile glass boxes that are doomed to shatter if we push them too far, yet boys are plastic boxes meant to get scratched, dirty, and pushed to their breaking point. The first time I ever experienced shame for being a girl was in first grade. Every recess we would play kickball, and one boy in my grade whiffed on one of his kicks. This elicited the response “you kick like a girl.” My heart sank, rage pulsed through me, and in that moment all I felt was anger. As the anger subsided, it was replaced with confusion. Why? Why was it bad to kick or throw like a girl? I can kick and throw just as far as half of the guys out here. It made no sense.
The inequalities between male and female sports are quite obvious. It starts right with appearance. There are multiple female sports that have a skirt in their uniforms, such as lacrosse, tennis, and field hockey. Upon research into this topic, the only real answer I could get is that skirts were worn because of tradition, so basically because they’ve always worn skirts. All this does is reaffirm the belief that girls are meant to sit up straight like ladies and always be and dress properly. Women are meant to act gracefully, and to leave the heavy lifting to the men. Now, on a good note, there are many lacrosse teams that have now switched to wearing shorts or allowing the option to wear shorts. This is progress, not equality.
This past year, in anatomy class with Mr. Vining, we explored concussions and statistics about concussions. I found a statistic that girls are four times more likely to sustain a concussion than boys. I presented this to the class, and Mr. Vining brought up the subjectiveness of that statistic. It’s a societal norm for boys to “tough it out.” They don’t want to be seen as weak, and having an injury could make them appear that way. It wasn’t that girls are more susceptible to concussions, it was that they are more likely to report an injury. This further supports the preposterous stereotype that girls need to be treated as those fragile glass boxes. The actual reality is that the toxic masculinity found within sports is causing boys to appear tougher when they’re just being naive. They are probably unaware that suffering multiple blows to the head without properly recovering can lead to major brain damage and memory loss. This isn’t about how they appear, this is about life and death.
This is not an attack on the male-identifying population, but rather the perspective of the female athlete. An outside view of their internal expectations. I empathize with them and their expectations. They are always expected to get right back up and “tough it out,” and that must be both physically and mentally taxing. My goal is to bring awareness to the inequality and inconsistent expectations surrounding male and female sports. Because awareness elicits education, which can lead to change.
The Fall’s Hate Speech Meeting, Revisited
By Robert “Cotton” Strong ’23
In October of 2021, the Hebron Academy community met to discuss the impact of hate speech and bullying at our school. This came in response to an incident in which a student wrote a racist, homophobic, and hateful message online directed at both students and teachers. For this event, human rights educator Steve Wessler was invited to speak and instructed students to think about how our words affect others, and how the whole community could work to better itself. The presentation and small-group conversations were meant to be a kind of healing event for the community, and Mr. Wessler did bring up several important points about empathy and compassion, with many walking away feeling as though their eyes were opened.
However, some students felt that it was as productive as it was intended to be. To find out what the Hebron community really thought about this event, I recently asked several students for their thoughts and opinions on the workshop.
While I was expecting the responses to be at least somewhat mixed, a majority did not find the meeting to be a positive experience. While many community members enjoyed parts of the meeting, specifically when students were invited to stand up and share their own experiences, many students thought it was simply a waste of time. “It feels like most of [the student body]
24 didn’t need to hear this. And the rest of us, the ones that needed to hear it, just didn’t listen” said one student. Many students echoed this same idea that the students that may benefit from learning about respect, empathy, and acceptance, simply chose not to take this workshop seriously. Another student, who thought the meeting was actually a step in the wrong direction, said “I think it was a waste of time, and it turned into an unnecessary joke.” Some students also feel that their time being spent on this activity was unjust to them. “It was a group punishment for the actions of one person . . . As someone who was once severely bullied, it is the worst thing for me to hear someone who hasn't been a highschool student in twenty-five years tell me about bullying . . . I would rather focus on my classes, not gonna lie.”
Some students also believe that this event speaks to a larger problem at the school. In the past, many students, faculty, and alumni have spoken about problems of respect at Hebron, as well as the lack of diversity among the faculty and student body. Most notably, in 2020, a petition was created asking the school to reconcile several issues of accountability and racial inclusivity in the community. The petition outlined several specific points to help the school grow, including diversifying the faculty, investing time and resources into the respect team, updating the Albert Lepage Center for diversity and inclusion, changes to class curriculums to further include black voices, creating more scholarship opportunities for non white students, and more. Only two of these points have been met: the school provided literature from black authors for the next year’s all school read, and Mr. Ruiz has recently been named director of the Albert Lepage center for diversity and inclusion, stating his goal was to help people “understand that all individuals are entitled to be treated with dignity and integrity and afforded opportunities.” To many students, it feels as though many of the other goals have been ignored. When students don’t see the school taking steps towards inclusion, but have to take a day to discuss acceptance and hate speech, some people feel as though the school is avoiding making tangible changes. “It feels like this school will do literally anything except make a genuine attempt to diversify the student body or faculty” said a student. Another stated “It was a school effort to appear to do something while achieving nothing, but it at least was theoretically moving in the right direction.” Several teachers pointed out that some actions are not seen by students. Citing work the school has done to educate students and faculty on diversity, equity, inclusion and justice, as well as the fact that this work has lost the school multiple donations from rich alumni, teachers feel that some of the sacrifices and effort the school has made have gone under appreciated.
The school has made steps in the right direction in terms of diversity, inclusion, and acceptance over recent years. However, some of the student body appears to believe that the school should not use meetings or workshops like the one in October to solve problems, but instead make actual, material, change. Most think steps like bringing in some more diverse faculty members, reaching out to marginalized communities for financial aid opportunities, or bringing back the respect team may help the student body regain confidence in the administration and grow the Hebron community in amazing ways. However, some faculty members will tell you that these steps are not as simple as they might sound. Either way, everyone hopes that the school and the student body will learn from past experiences, either as a result of growth-based meetings that open our eyes to issues in our behavior, or by looking back on some of the failings of the school in the past.
