Charlotte Wells '24
TW: mention of eating disorders
As the Upperclassmen ventured to different colleges for several college nights, the underclassmen had the regular Monday night convocation. A light dress-up dinner, followed by a seated talk. Simple, right? Well here’s where it gets tricky. The last two convocations, specifically the last one, were far from simple. They touched on difficult topics for the purpose of educating us 9th and 10th graders. The first convocation to strike some talk was one given about language. Two women came and talked about how we have to be careful about what we say, essentially that “words hurt.” While the talk was educational, it kind of missed the mark. The women talked about certain words we shouldn’t use, like “crazy” or “blindspot,” and it just felt like there are so many awful words they could have touched on but decided to go with words I’m sure many of us are comfortable with. While this wasn’t a huge deal, what followed certainly was.
This past Monday night created a huge amount of discussion around convocations and the need for improvement. While only the lower classmen, some T.A.s, and faculty were there, I’m sure by now most everyone has heard about the content and knows exactly what went wrong. An email was sent out prior to the convocation detailing it as a presentation that would“explore how our language around food and our body affects the way we feel about ourselves, the signs and symptoms of eating disorders, and when to worry/how to get help if you may need it.” So yes, this was transparent in telling us that the subject of eating disorders would be touched on. However, walking into the convocation I doubt anyone knew that “signs and symptoms” meant an incredibly detailed list of every single eating disorder and every single thing that happens when you are suffering from it.
5 minutes in, only 5 minutes, a student walks out. A teacher is standing at the door and opens it for them almost like a go ahead! Walk out! The teacher doesn’t do this again. There were reports and rumors about teachers making lists of students who walked out, teachers shaking their heads, and mentions of sending you to the counselor if you walked out. While most of this is speculation, it still made it so that too many students were afraid to get up and walk out. For those of us who did, it was incredibly nerve-wracking but necessary. Many of us would have appreciated a talk on nutrition and how to have a healthy balanced diet from a professional. But to have us sit there in a mandatory talk detailing several eating disorders? Not okay. My belief is that these talks are meant to inspire us, students, educate us, and while this talk was aimed to educate, most of what it did was upset students, and really just remind several people of things they wish not to remember.
After the past year Cate has had, we are finally beginning to find our footing as a community, able to be together now in ways we couldn't this past year. So now more than ever is when we need to be working to bond the community, faculty, and students alike. I have nothing but respect for acknowledging these difficult topics and I know they need to be talked about, but there must be an improvement. Around 30 students got up and left that night. I know we can do better. These talks have so much potential and ability to create and foster amazing new ideas and to educate students on how to live better lives, but to do this the students and faculty need to work together. The purpose of this article wasn’t to bestow blame on anyone but to provide insight into what went wrong. I hope that better changes will be made and to do that, we need to speak up and voice our opinions. Only when we students respond, will be when those improvements start. This is an incredibly enthusiastic community full of bright-minded, energetic people. So let’s start using some of that energy to make Cate better.
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