For most high schools around the country, one of the biggest choices administrators must make in the winter months is whether or not the weather is bad enough for a “snow day.” At Choate, the prospect of making these decisions is overlooked for two reasons. The first is that—as one teacher memorably told me my freshman year—it would take the wrathful hand of God for the school to cancel classes on account of the weather. The second is, quite simply, that our administration has plenty of important issues to worry about and address at this time. The seniors are finishing up the college process while the juniors are already being overwhelmed with the new expectations of the College Office. The new living arrangements for faculty and students next year are stirring up mixed feelings among returning boarding students, especially the juniors who are applying to be prefects next year. Most importantly—at least from an administrative point of view—leadership positions are changing hands this spring. Students of the third, fourth, and fifth forms are applying or being nominated for positions of influence, ranging from club officers to Judicial Committee members and Student Council representatives.
This shift in power from the experienced incumbent leaders to students with less leadership experience must give the administration a collective heart attack. Most of the elections at Choate are based on approval voting, which is inherently more democratic and telling than other forms of voting because it allows for an individual to recognize all the qualified candidates. However, approval voting also leaves room for a lot of error and is often based more on whim than sound reasoning. On one hand, Choate students strive to elect peers who would best represent them and work well with both the faculty and student body. On the other hand, as teenagers first and foremost, we are all heavily influenced by our predispositions, humor, and peer pressure.
The administrators have no direct say in exactly who winds up in the highest positions of power and leadership. Unfortunately, this has caused some trouble this year with some of the current senior leaders and juniors who would have been strong potential candidates. The prefect situation in Memorial House and a few other dorms has been bad enough that the administration has no choice but to “up the ante” and scrutinize the atypical stains on the otherwise solid résumés of would-be prefects. House advisers now have the added factor of the “clean slate” to consider when finding the right group of juniors to take the reins of what is arguably the most directly influential position of leadership in this school—prefectship.
It seems intuitively right that the students with clean slates would make the best prefects and leaders. However, this is not always the case. Someone who has never seen the “Ford Glare” would never be able to adequately warn others not to make stupid choices. Someone who has never been under enough pressure to tempt him or her to break a major school rule would not recognize the struggle if it threated to overwhelm an underclassman. As upperclassmen, we have an obligation to set good examples for our younger peers, but we can only do so by presenting to them the good, the bad, and the ugly.
In an ideal world, prefects would be perfect, and the student leaders would only need to do their duties to inspire the rest of the community to success and greatness. But because we don’t live an ideal world, there has to be another source of inspiration for those being led and those doing the leading. I believe that all upperclassmen, regardless of their positions or talents, should actively engage in setting good examples for the rest of the school.
This doesn’t mean we have to be saints or the archetypical good students. It simply means that we need to see the tremendous effect our words and behavior have on the younger students who look up to us as teammates, classmates, and dorm mates. Whether we know it or not, we set the tone for the entire student body. With just a term left in the year, the seniors need to get their act together and realize how much they influence the students they will leave behind next year. The juniors and sophomores need to take on the roles of leadership as they come, and they need to do so with a sense of ownership and duty to this school. It is a part of our duty as students here to step up and assume leadership and responsibility.
