The Forum on April 24 brought good news to those graduating seniors, and also brought up some important topics on how to improve SDA.
The first topic brought out by junior Cassidy Mayeda, the ASB President, revealed that the school had decided on having a traditional graduation on the green grass of the sports field.
The topic of Community Day was brought up. Similar to Exhibition day, Community day will have a full day of shortened periods, and students will enjoy activities to develop a more accepting and supportive culture at SDA.
Community day was reinstated because of the negative Facebook pages that have sprung up, such as SDA First Times and SDA insults, where people can anonymously call out SDA students to embarrass or insult them anonymously, said Mayeda. The point of having such an event was to remind SDA students what a kind and caring place SDA really is.
Students who noticed the Facebook page deemed it a dangerous page, because they destroy the self-confidence of people and embarrassed them online. Senior Elliot Horen said that he had previously written a letter towards these pages asking them to take the page down, and had, at one point, persuaded some authors to take down their respective pages, but they soon sprang up again.
Other students wanted to bring awareness to the disgrace such pages bring to SDA. Community Day would be an opportunity where students would “…break off into groups and do activities centered on being aware and kind,” said Mayeda. Students from Having a Voice said that they would create a group that would organize such an event at the end of next year’s first quarter.
Welcoming incoming freshmen was also discussed. In the past, seniors wrote letters to anonymous freshmen on words of wisdom, such as what clubs to join, what classes to take, and how to have fun at SDA. Mayeda wanted to bring the event back, and encouraged any new students to SDA, including freshmen and sophomores who transferred it, to create letters to help relieve the anxiety of changing schools. Biology teacher Michael Santos, who also organizes Link Crew, has handled the letters in the past, and will possibly handle them this year, too.