Senior year is supposed to be the most important year of one’s highschool career—it’s the culmination of all the blood, sweat, and tears you’ve put into your schoolwork, all the time commitments to after-school activities you’ve made, all the long nights spent poring over essays in an effort to get that elusive A. Senior year is a celebration of achievement, and what better way to celebrate than by having exclusive senior privileges?
Senior privilege at KO has historically included things like walking on the Senior Green, having early lunch periods, and getting priority during course registration. While first-round course selection still remains, the Senior Green has been off-limits to all students in recent months, with short green fencing creating a barrier between the grass and the sidewalk. Early lunches have also dropped out of the shrinking list of senior privileges. In past years, juniors and seniors had early lunches due to the old schedule, and many upperclassmen looked forward to finally having early mealtimes. However, the implementation of the new schedule pushed upperclassmen lunches later in the day for at least half of the week, upsetting many juniors who had been anticipating earlier mealtimes for two years. While some might think that a later lunch and a lack of exclusive spaces aren’t too much to throw a hissy about, rising seniors on campus have pointed out that these are just a couple of incidents in a larger trend of senior privileges being phased out at KO.
This issue reaches beyond mealtimes and study spots, and the upcoming renovations to the library and the dining hall are perhaps the clearest example of this. Although we understand that the renovations must have been incredibly difficult to plan out, and we acknowledge the efforts of the school in creating this beautiful new space for future KO students, it can feel a little bit like the Class of 2025 has gotten the short end of the stick. For many juniors, the recently announced renovations, which are scheduled to finish construction in the summer of 2025, are an inconvenience.
Of course, these renovations had to happen during someone’s senior year, so why should rising seniors feel especially offended that it’s happening during theirs? Well, the truth is that the renovations don’t seem to have needed to take up a whole school year at all—the renovation could have been split between school years, with a third of it being completed during the spring semester of one year, a third of it completed over the summer, and a third completed in the fall of the next school year. Strategic scheduling could have allowed seniors to have access to the renovated library and dining hall for at least a few months before they graduated. As it stands with the current renovation plans, however, it looks as though the Class of 2025 will never be able to use any of the resources the new infrastructure offers and must spend the year finding other places to study and eating in Soby Gym, a cramped space that often feels permeated with sweat and heat. Juniors feel understandably upset, and left out of the conversation when it comes to the creation and execution of the renovation plans.
One option that we suggest to supplement this loss of the dining hall could be for seniors to eat in Alumni Hall instead of Soby. This way, seniors get a separate space that makes up for a final year without a proper cafeteria, and Soby Gym, a notoriously small space, would be less crowded for other forms. Of course, there are some issues with this idea; Outlook, which uses Alumni as a practice space, would be displaced and would have to utilize other spaces on campus. Additionally, it might be difficult to set up hot lunches in both Soby and Alumni if the staff and equipment has to be doubled, moved between periods, or split up.
Another, simpler and more manageable option than having separate senior lunches in Alumni could be to designate certain spaces on campus for seniors only or to have silent study spaces. There, seniors could work on homework, college applications, and their senior thesis in the same way students in the past have utilized the library (which will be unavailable due to the construction next year). Designating places such as the conference room on the top floor of Seaverns or the outdoor tables in front of Alumni (when the weather gets nicer) would benefit all students.
Rising seniors would love to collaborate with faculty and staff to make their senior year just as special as past classes’. If the ideas outlined in this editorial are not probable or have glaring flaws, the student body is absolutely willing to work with administrators at KO to work out a solution that could benefit everyone. Improving communication between students and faculty in order to create a better KO for all of us is a significant goal of the KO News, and we hope that this editorial can be a stepping stone to a more collaborative relationship.
