Gateway has a history of addressing students’ needs: whether it’s through anti-bullying awareness, AP Scholarships, or free student lunch for impoverished homes. But, inevitably, there are some things that fall through the cracks.
Gateway (as of the time of publication) has 7 Administrators and 4 directors. Yet, Gateway has over 800 students in its high school alone, and over 1,000 if you include the middle school. That’s a lot of mouths to feed, so it’s no wonder some issues slip through the cracks.
Ask any student at Gateway, and it’s more likely than not that they’ll have some issue with the school. This, of course, is to be expected; Gateway’s administration doesn’t have eyes in students’ heads, so we can’t expect every little problem to be seen and corrected on its own. But there is a way we can supplement this: we must use our own eyes.
For most students at Gateway, their personal issues were not—or could not be—picked up on by our administration, like gum on a bus seat. The ability to communicate these issues with the school would be powerful if Gateway’s lines of communication weren’t lacking. Even if students have problems a majority of the time, you’d be hard-pressed to find students who were able to get these problems across to the school. Why is this?
One explanation for this is approachability; there’s a certain amount of wariness toward approaching administration, and that’s because the only time most students interact with them is if they’re in trouble for some reason or another, which paints administrators as less benevolent and more disciplinary.
Another contributing reason for this issue is transparency. Policies and issues, even when addressed, aren’t often conveyed to the student body. This often leads students to be uninformed and frustrated about policy changes, overall having the effect of making administration even less approachable to the average student.
For example, last week, the administration laid out a new policy for our Chomp periods: “No visitors allowed,” as certain posted signs say. While the policy does have valid reasons to be in place, the frustrating part of it was how it was communicated—or rather, not.
The way we (the authors) found out, as well as every other high school student, came during the very Chomp period it was implemented. We had no warning or heads-up that this policy change would happen. And it’s not like this is a minor change; due to the nature of Chomp periods as a student’s only time to relax, many high-schoolers visit their friends’ Chomp periods. These people had to completely reassess their schedule on the fly.
Fortunately, there are other ways to get your message across. Primarily in Gateway’s history, this has been done through our very own newspaper, The Chomp, with articles like “The AP Exam Scam,” “In Defense of Denim,” and this very article. Chomp authors have been effective in some pursuits, but The Chomp has its own flaws.
For one, it requires a great deal of effort to write an entire article for what may be a small grievance. Another issue is the nature of an article itself; articles in The Chomp are non-confrontational in the sense that administration can choose either not to respond or not even read the article, which limits the effectiveness of this approach.
Unfortunately, we don’t have any problem-solving institution that can effectively blend approachability and action, but that’s soon to change.
The Gateway Student Union is a prospective club that aims to resolve these problems starting next year. Unlike other outlets, the GSU will function as a place of discourse rather than a place of argumentation, with group meetings functioning more as think tanks, where any issue—big or small—can be brought up to your friends and peers. Club leaders themselves will hold the responsibility of presenting these changes directly to the administration and following up on issues if they are not addressed.
The GSU also promises to create transparency in the issue-resolution process in many ways. First, grievances will be discussed at meetings, so the reasonability of such grievances is decided collaboratively. Second, if a proposal is shot down by the administration, we’ll make sure that we get a clear reason for the decision. Finally, a monthly report will be issued in The Chomp, objectively covering what proposals were approved or rejected and why.
We hope these measures will help ensure students are able to effectively raise their concerns and to make school operations more transparent for all.
In the spirit of transparency and communication, we offer a form below to express your interest, concerns, or suggestions: https://forms.gle/ZLqq4ym6bg7Z4iSD9
