Editor’s Note: This piece is one-half of a duo debating whether or not the class of 2022 should’ve written their mission statement before committing infractions. The sister-article which argues in opposition can be found here.

At the start of the 2018-2019 school year, freshmen were asked to write a statement that shows the Parker community how our grade wants to be regarded as Upper School students. The vision statement is a Google document, signed by the grade stating: the class of 2022 will try to be aware of our behavior, create a space for discussion, and be responsible for our mistakes.

In previous years, the statement was required a response to bad behavior such as rude comments or repeated violations of rules. Instead, this year, the statement was written before any bad behavior happened. It seems like the administration is not letting us learn from our own mistakes or mature as students in an effective manner.

Head of Upper School Justin Brandon and Upper School Dean of Student Life Christian Bielizna requested that the statement be created. At the start of the school year, freshman gradeheads Upper School Science teacher Ryan Zaremba and Upper School English teacher Cory Zeller sent out an email to the grade asking for student volunteers to work on the vision statement.

As the administration strives to create opportunities for freshmen to learn from their actions, this is not the way it should be done. Having the freshmen write this statement preemptively shows that we aren’t trusted to become more mature students on our own. Each class seems to have a new rule set for them based off of the behavior of the prior class. In sixth grade, the class of 2022 was not able to eat outside in the courtyard at lunch because of mistakes made by past sixth grade students. The class of 2022 being required to write the statement before any displays of bad behavior is yet another way that the freshman class has been affected by mistakes made by other grades.

The gradeheads continually tell us that we are now mature high schoolers, but the request to create the vision statement is limiting our ability to learn from our mistakes. As we are supposed to be developing into more mature students, this feels like the administration doesn’t trust us to change.

I don’t disagree with what is written in the statement — it says we acknowledge the fact that we won’t always be perfect, but we will be considerate and respectful of others while holding ourselves accountable for our own actions.

The statement is meant to hold us accountable for future actions. As a grade, we won’t be able to learn from mistakes if we are being told that our actions contradicted what was written in the statement. If we were to write the statement after, using our mistakes to shape the statement, the grade would have a better chance to reflect on those actions.

I fail to see how using the statement as a preventive action for bad behavior will be effective. I can tell that by the time we return from Thanksgiving break, students – even those who wrote the statement already will have already forgotten what the statement said, let alone writing it. If someone is arguing about another student’s opinions and not giving that student space, it’s not going to occur to them that they are violating the class of 2022 vision statement.

I sent out an informal, anonymous Google form to the freshmen class, and one of the questions asked whether the statement will be effective in preventing bad behavior. There were 37 responses, and only one response said the statement would be effective. Thirteen students gave a definitive no, and the last 23 answered that the statement will possibly be effective.

Students were given a chance to give input on the statement during a graderoom. They wrote down ideas and thoughts that should be incorporated into the vision statement, which was then compiled into the statement. Though most students attended that graderoom, many students, including me, attended Students of Color. This decreased the input given by students who identified as a student of color. The statement would represent more of the grade had the students who attended SOCA been given a space for input.

Eleven freshmen students: Jackson Antonow, Gianni Baglivo, Jacob Boxerman, Alex Carlin, Sammi Coleman, Eli Kraft Moog, Reed Rodman, Sophia Rogers, Star Rothkopf, Cas Spencer, and Tess Wayland, worked on the statement over the course of two graderooms. These students voluntarily chose to write the statement on behalf of the rest of the class of 2022. Though the whole grade was given the opportunity to write the statement, most did not.

The rest of the students had to do was just type their name at the end of the document. In my poll,  21.6 percent of the students who responded said they did not fully read the statement. Though everyone signed the statement, if someone did not, they would have had to talk to Mr. Brandon and Bielizna. Typing your name on the document was the only thing that was required to agree to the statement. This isn’t ensuring that each and every student read the statement fully or at all, which decreases the effectiveness of the statement.

As each grade follows in the footsteps of older students, the vision statement is another way the administration is shifting consequences to younger grades and decreasing trust in students. The statement is an ineffective way to hold students accountable for their future actions. The process of writing the statement fails to recognize us as individuals and does not require each and every student to read and understand what is written in the statement. Having freshmen write the statement before bad actions shows that freshmen are assumed to make the same mistakes each year. This shows that we aren’t trusted to change and mature, and the only solution to that was to make us write a statement that won’t even be effective.