What is it like to be a leader at Bay?
I think one of the defining features of Bay is that it’s a very student-led community. That’s seen at Morning Meeting, clubs and Intersessions. They’re all student-led, and I’m proud to say that, because we have a supportive community that’s willing to let students take that role. There’s always something to do; there’s always some way to get involved at Bay, and that’s what excites me.
Freshman, sophomore, junior year there was a lot of looking up to people, a lot of learning from people, experiencing what other students had to provide for you. Now there’s a shift in senior year for thinking not just for yourself but for the people you are leading, affecting. Again, it’s a thinking exercise really. It’s how to think, how to react to a group. It’s about providing for more than yourself.
How did you choose to get involved with the CRC?
The Conduct Review Council is a peer disciplinary board. It’s made up of five students and four faculty – so more students than faculty. We all have an equal vote, an equal voice. We analyze cases. We look at disciplinary violations, things like that. We come up with a set of solutions for that violation and present those solutions to Tim Johnson, who makes the final call. Our input is highly valued with him. I think our ultimate goal is to represent student responsibility. The student body’s acknowledgement of our actions and our willingness to take responsibility for those actions, our willingness to grow from our mistakes.
I appreciated the analysis, the truth-seeking, the collaboration, the maturity of the council – I was attracted to all those things. I soon found out that the council is much more than that, and that’s what really made me fall in love with it. It’s really about supporting your community and strengthening your community through ethics, through ideals, through lessons learned, through experiences. That’s really why I came to the CRC and reapplied this year and am the senior chair this year – I care about its message more than its disciplinary functions.
What makes the CRC important to the Bay community?
There are a lot of misconceptions about the CRC – how we are police officers or detectives, and we don’t do any of that. We simply see eye-to-eye with a student and try to connect with that student and see how that student can improve from their mistakes and reflect on the past. Our ultimate goal is not to punish students, but to improve and strengthen students.
Another misconception is that we only do disciplinary cases, when in fact we have a lot of other roles in the community. For example, we helped create this project last year called the Ethics Forum Project. It’s a student forum and we talk about ethics in the community and different ethical situations. In the next few weeks we’re going to talk about sexism in the dress code and if that’s something that we should talk about at Bay. We definitely play a more active role than a lot of people think.
#SchoolStories 