WOODBURY — Picture this: a 13-year-old walking through the doors of Nonnewaug for the first day of high school. That’s a quintessential moment that everyone can think back to, and it’s very nerve-racking, right?
Some things I remember sticking out are not knowing where to go, praying that I had friends in my lunch wave, and how scary the seniors were.
I know that sounds stupid, because the only thing that sets us apart is a few years of school. Well, once the novelty wore off, I saw the seniors for what they really were — students with more awesome privileges and opportunities than I.
I realized pretty quick that upperclassmen, juniors and seniors, got a ton of freedom attached to their upperclassmen privileges. Leave and return, late arrival, early dismissal, final exemption: all of these, which I wanted to experience more than anything at the time, just two short years away from being ours too.
For some of us, including me, this was our driving force, and a major source of motivation. Work hard for two years, get good grades, come into school on time, and earn those privileges.
This is what was preached to us, the entire Class of 2026, our whole freshman and sophomore years.
“I thought it was really cool,” Keller Jones, a junior at Nonnewaug, said. “We get all these good things for being good students, and achieving academically.”
Promises and incentives, fed by Nonnewaug to the 160-something sophomores last year, with upperclassmen privileges just out of our grasp — then, poof. All of these privileges, which the most recent juniors got to have, taken from us.
Now, leave and return being taken is understandable because it takes away the danger of students being unaccounted for and the liability of it.
“Leave and return never existed prior to COVID,” Nonnewaug principal Mykal Kuslis said. “It was a COVID kind of mitigation strategy to get people out of the building who didn’t have a class. I think a lot of kids were rushing to go out and get stuff and make it back on time.”
“There were a couple accidents last year,” Kuslis continues, “culminating with one where a student flipped his car over during leave and return, and then all the other kids on leave-return were there, and they tried to flip the car over by themselves before they called a tow truck. I actually don’t even remember who it was at this point. And so for us that was a really big deal. And there’s definitely liability on the school’s perspective on that, you know. So there was really no way the juniors were gonna have leave and return this year.”
Okay, so that seems fair. But late arrival and early dismissal, final exemptions, all things we had been promised and looked forward to since the day we stepped into Nonnewaug, all of these promised and taken from only the Class of 2026?
Why not wait just one more year to implement these changes, so our class could have the privileges we were originally promised?
“I used to really focus in a lot of my classes, because I wanted to maintain above a 90 so I wouldn’t have to take finals,” Jones said. “But now that that is gone, I don’t feel like I have to try in classes, and my grades have slipped since freshman and sophomore year.”
Bradyn Boisseau, also Class of 2026, had the same mindset as Jones.
“I’d say I’m mad because there was no warning,” Boisseau said. “Say they made it that the freshmen didn’t have these privileges: There’s no point that they think they’ll get them, but we did think that. It’s like saying ‘this class before them[ Class of 2025] is better than the class after them[Class of 2026]’, so the administration doesn’t care what gets removed from us compared to what they promised. All I’m saying is that in an honors class, if you have a high enough grade, why shouldn’t you be rewarded some way?”
Besides a lowered work ethic, and being a little salty about the promise of those privileges being taken back, having no junior privilege counteracts a glaringly obvious fact: junior year is the most important year of high school.
This is a message that’s preached to most high school students, because junior year is the year colleges look at, and the rigor of your courses and grades in those courses are what colleges search for. It’s a good telling of character and work ethic.
But now, with final exemption taken away, there’s way less incentive to keep 90 or above in an honors class. That seems to go against what would make us look better to college admissions officers.
“I feel like the fact that they’re taken away just from our class is kind of unfair to us, being that they switched it just toward the end of last year,” Boisseau said. “Seeing junior year is the most important year of high school, and that privileges favor people with better grades and therefore promote higher grades, wouldn’t that mean you spend time trying to maintain high grades? What’s the difference of one final test versus a whole year of working hard?”
Clearly, juniors who think like Boisseau are upset about losing our privileges, and for a good reason too. Even seniors, who were the last class to have junior privileges, see the injustice.
“I mean I think it sucks for the juniors now,” Nonnewaug senior Emma Bigman said, “but it worked out pretty well for us. I think Dr. Kuslis coming in and changing everything kind of shocked everybody, but it’s also that seniors don’t have leave and return, so that sucks for a lot of people. But then again a lot of seniors arranged their schedules to come in early and late, so it really worked out for us.”
Yes, I’d say it worked out very well for the seniors, and very badly for us. I’ve talked to a lot of students in my class, and most of them share mine, as well as Jones’ and Boisseau’s, opinions. Despite this overwhelming majority of outrage, the junior class got cracked down on nonetheless.
When asked about this, Kuslis responded with something the juniors might not like to hear.
“I guess my question would be, who promised it to you?” Kuslis said. “Like, where is the email that says anything. I guess what I would say is a privilege is never promised.”
When I heard this, my thoughts went two different directions: aren’t most promises said out loud, and, wow, that’s kind of fair.
Really, there’s no denying that we got the short end of the stick, and maybe we were the random class that it had to fall upon. If not us, who could it have been?
Quite literally anyone else besides us would have been fine by me.
“I mean, I do feel bad it’s our current junior class, because I do like our juniors,” Kuslis said. “You guys are great kids. I mean, in fairness, you guys also were the first junior class ever to not have to have midterms.”
Not taking midterms is just like leave and return: it was taken away from everyone, not just us, so it’s not special.
Well, all the facts are laid out, and there’s only one conclusion to make – we got slighted.
Our class was the cut off, unjustly so, and Nonnewaug should have waited before changing things up so we could get what we have been expecting for two years.
That being said, there’s one quote I got that basically sums up everyone’s response to our opinions.
“Suck it, juniors,” senior Micah Tracht, who would be a junior if he didn’t skip eighth grade, said.
This is the opinion of Maia Colavito, a junior at Nonnewaug and the editor-in-chief of the Chief Advocate.