It’s no secret that the administration has made some substantial changes at Benilde-St. Margaret’s this past year. Changes like the final schedule, budget cuts, and layoffs have resulted in mixed feelings among the students. Because of this, rumors have spread around the school that the administration is planning on removing the option to “skip a final” for seniors next year. “Skip a final” is a long-lasting tradition for second-semester seniors. If students have a C or higher in a class, they can choose to skip the final in that class for the second semester. Another rumor that started was that students couldn’t leave campus during the fifth and sixth periods. Both rumors started a lot of conflict and rising tensions among students and the administration.
Principal Dan Worbleski was quick to address these rumors. He sent out an email with a Google Form attached to the Junior class labeled “Voices and Choices,” which allowed students to share their ideas about changes for their senior year. In the email, it was prefaced that students who responded to the Google form would be invited to a meeting during homeroom with Wrobleski himself to review some of the responses. Junior Ellie Kinkead went to the meeting. Some students felt like the meeting didn’t accomplish everything that they wanted it to. “I feel like we didn’t really establish anything concrete, but it was more like you’re gonna talk about this in the future,” Kinkead said.
In addition to this, in the first email sent, Mr. Wrobleski directly called out and corrected some of the rumors. He assured students that “skip a final” would not be taken away, and that the school would remain an open campus. Students, especially juniors, appreciated the transparency and effort that Wrobleski was making. An anonymous student attended the ‘Voices and Choices’ meeting and reflected afterwards. “[Mr. Wrobleski] is new. It’s definitely hard. We’re all used to the way Benilde is. I think when anybody comes in with any ideas or changes, a lot of people are kind of nervous, like they don’t really trust it, so I think that’s definitely hard to try to deal with,” the student said.
Mixed feelings came from the meeting for the students who attended. Some students appreciated the transparency and honesty that Mr. Wrobleski was showing, while others didn’t feel the same sentiment. The anonymous student expressed her concerns regarding the meeting. “ I felt like we didn’t get to share a lot about what we were actually wanting to talk about, and it was more about being told things that we necessarily didn’t really need to be told about,” an anonymous student said.