Students talked about the design club’s plans to improve the campus recycling system and administration’s response to the senior prank pillow fight at the last Forum meeting of this school year Friday.

The discussion was led by juniors Katherine Wimsatt and Kimberly Quach. Math teacher Martin Chaker’s homeroom design club is currently working on improving the campus recycling system. They are developing receptacles that better suit students’ needs and believe that if their plan succeeds the school might be able to make a profit from it. They have analyzed the existing system and are collaborating with math teacher Paul Brice’s recycling homeroom.
Students at the Forum remarked on the lack of consistency in the current placement of receptacles, and how it would be helpful to have printed signs to inform students on what is recyclable. Design club is accepting other issues from the student/staff population to develop into real-world solutions; ideas can be submitted at meetings during homeroom in Room 34.

The next topic of discussion was senior pranks. Junior Yoni Kruvi said that after the water balloon incident from two years ago resulted in people being injured, senior pranks have faced restrictions from the administration. . According to junior Brittany Krechter, seniors had lain down along the inside of the new tunnel and blocked the flow of traffic after homeroom. Another senior prank was a pillow fight among seniors. Both of these pranks left bemused, and in the case of the senior-lined tunnel, slightly peeved students who had to navigate through the narrow tunnel without stepping on the seniors on the floor.

In the Forum, students said suspension doesn’t seem to be a fair punishment for what students called a harmless prank. Students spoke about how there needs to be trust between seniors and the administration so that students will not get carried away and to keep the fun, quirky, and healthy atmosphere that SDA is known for.

The year when students put together a cardboard forest complete with giant cardboard animals and mazes for students to walk through is a good example that was brought up of staff and students communicating in order to ensure the success and safety of the event.

Cleaning up was also important, students said. Students reminded one another to keep in mind that janitors are people and a prank shouldn’t end with them having to do more work because students are sloppy and careless; as senior Nate Neumann said, that means scattering glitter around campus is a no-go.

At the end of the meeting, Neumann spoke to the Forum about how much he loves the program. He said he had been attending meetings since October of freshman year and that it has served as a source of inspiration for his involvement in government. He spoke about how he loves the connection between students and staff that the program facilitates and gave a big “thank you” to everyone in attendance.