If you give a Parker student body Cookies, they’re going to ask for ideas. When you give them the idea, they’ll probably ask you for support.

The threat of Cookies being canceled annually looms over the heads of students as cabinet allots time in student government for Cookies proposal writing and Curriculum Committee sends email after email. This year, it happened.

The fault of Cookies being canceled is on all of us. It’s not on the Curriculum Committee alone, and future Curriculum Committees will not be able to just snap their fingers and bring back the tradition. To bring Cookies back, we need more than just student ideas. Yes, Cookies is a student driven event that at its core needs student leadership, but it needs the backing of the whole Parker community. Cookies needs the support of faculty who want to run Cookies or have been a part of successful ones. It needs funding beyond transportation. It needs time to develop, so that proposals aren’t just an afterthought. 

Cookies aren’t the only Parker tradition that needs support. While events like County Fair and MX have been deeply affected by COVID-19 precautions, they won’t magically return when masks come off and we get to stop spitting in tubes. The people outside of planning groups and committees have a lot more say in the success of Parker traditions. As students, you don’t have to get involved at the highest level with planning groups and committees, but we cannot just expect these events to happen.

The seniors this year will be the first class in recent years to participate in May Term, the two weeks at the end of the year where seniors work on a passion project. The planning is basically a more robust version of Cookies planning: students write a proposal, it gets reviewed by a faculty sponsor, funding is reviewed, and the plan is set. Students went into May Term planning with the mindset that whether or not the plan is good, May Term will happen. Then, they received the support from teachers to make the plan feasible. We need that with other events. Expect that it will happen, and put in the work to make it happen well. 

Democrafest is an example of putting in the work—the planning made the tradition happen despite the rain, and the students pulled through with food, speakers, and posters. Students running for leadership positions want to be able to speak to their peers at Democrafest, and that desire made the event happen. Don’t we want to do Cookies too?

Besides enthusiasm and abstract support, events like Cookies and even May Term need financial backing. While events like Democrafest are great, they rely on the money of students. In theory, Cookies (as well as May Term) works solely from school funding, but it’s almost impossible to create a fruitful experience with little money. 

Don’t treat anything as a guarantee – administrators, faculty, or students. While it’s easy to complain as a student about the demise of Cookies, we have to be ready to admit that we took easy approval for granted. And while it’s easy from a more adult position to miss instruction time or call out thin ideas, there isn’t exactly a support system for a Cookie’s success. Right now, we have to treat every “tradition” as a “maybe” that everyone needs to ensure becomes a “yes.”